This paper develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work … street (unskilled) crimes. White collar crimes decline less (or increase) with age and education. Predictions for age-crime … and education-crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self-report data from the National Longitudinal …

We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. It shows that even if the direct harm to victims of … hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert … more law-enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate crime. These differences also have previously unrecognized effects on …

Theories of crime in economics focus on the roles of deterrence and incapacitation in reducing criminal activity. In … play a role in crime reduction. This paper extends the Becker-Ehrlich model to a standard labor supply model that includes … an individual chooses to engage in crime. Second, we show that whether the production of criminal activity is a …

therapies and crime rates. We describe recent trends in crime and review the evidence showing mental illness as a clear risk … pharmaceutical therapies for the treatment of mental illness which diffused during the "great American crime decline." We examine … limited international data, as well as more detailed American data to assess the relationship between crime rates and rates of …

Strong sentences are common "tough on crime" tool used to reduce the incentives for individuals to participate in … participating in crime may adjust. I use California's Three Strikes law to identify several effects of a large increase in the … combined with the high cost of violent crime relative to non-violent crime implies that Three Strikes may not be a cost …

media violence affects violent crime in the field. We exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to … 2004, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences … the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1 to 1.3 percent. After exposure to the movie, between 12AM and …

Economic theory predicts that increasing the severity of punishments will deter criminal behavior by raising the … expected price of committing crime. This implicit price can be substantially raised by making prison sentences longer, but only …