This paper argues that the Economics of Crime concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which is … unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several feasible … alternatives to punishment exist, such as offering positive incentives or handing out awards for law abiding behavior. These …

As crime becomes increasingly widespread it may be optimal not to lower but to increase the standard of evidence. Even … though a higher standard of evidence results in a lower expected penalty for all levels of crime, it increases the expected … penalty for high levels of crime relative to the expected penalty for lower levels of crime. Consequently, a high standard of …

anger, ‘social’ emotions like shame and guilt need to be present for punishment to be an effective deterrent of …

double dividend in that it reduces both minor offenses and more severe crime. We develop a model of criminal subcultures in … attractive for some people who would otherwise commit more severe crime. If social status is sufficiently important in criminal … subcultures, zero-tolerance reduces crime across the board. …

Earlier studies on income inequality and crime have typically used total income or total earnings. However, it is quite … likely that it is changes in permanent rather than in transitory income that affects crime rates. The purpose of this paper … income and, second, estimating crime equations with the two separate income components as explanatory variables. The results …

Empirical evidence reveals that unemployment tends to increase property crime but that it has no effect on violent … crime. To explain these facts, we examine a model of criminal gangs and suggest that there is a substitution effect between … property crime and violent crime at work. In the model, non-monetary valuation of gang membership is private knowledge. Thus …

This paper develops a model of crime analyzing how such behavior is associated with individual and neighborhood poverty … across crime types. A key implication is that greater economic segregation in a city should have no effect or a negative … effect on property crime, but a positive effect on violent crime. Using IV methods, I show this implication to be consistent …