This paper explores the advantages of focusing law enforcement on some locations when offenders can choose locations. The substitutability of different crimes from the offender's perspective is established as the key variable determining whether asymmetric enforcement is socially desirable. When...

Marginal deterrence concerns the incentives created by criminal penalties for oenders to refrain from committing more harmful acts. We show that when offenders act sequentially, it is often optimal for the level of the sanction, not just the expected sanction, to rise with the severity of the...

This paper incorporates the reality that the bulk of law enforcement is decentralized while sanctions are chosen centrally, and explores the implications for the socially optimal sanction level. The presence of interregional externalities in the form of crime diversion induces socially excessive...

In 2012, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched the fourth major nationwide housing discrimination study with the goal of measuring housing discrimination in rental and owner-occupied housing for blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The substantial declines in discrimination observed...

The standard economic model of crime focuses on the goal of deterrence, but actual punishment schemes, most notably recent three-strikes laws, seem to rely more on imprisonment than is prescribed by that model. One explanation is that prison also serves an incapacitation function. The current...

Criminal procedure concerns the rules regarding the treatment of criminal defendants during the time from their arrest until the determination of a final verdict. From an economic perspective, the goal of this process is to achieve the most accurate determination of guilt at the lowest possible...

This paper analyzes the conditions under which the level of hate speech (expressing hostility towards racial and other minorities) in society can influence whether individuals commit hate crimes against minorities. More generally, we explore the conditions under which speech can influence...

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through...

The "puzzle" of blackmail is that threats to reveal private information that would be harmful to someone in exchange for money are illegal, but revelation is not. The resolution is that concealment of information about product quality impedes the efficient operation of markets, whereas...

The standard economic model of crime since Becker (1968) is primarily concerned with deterrence. Actual punishment policies, however, appear to rely on imprisonment to a greater extent than is prescribed by that model. One reason may be the incapacitation function of prison. The model developed...