Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature, testing...

The author models the interaction between the “Center”, represented by inspectors, and free riders in local trains (“hares” in the Russian slang). In order to characterize the optimal deterring strategy of the Center, one must look into the nature the interaction among parties in this...

This paper examines the association between trust and community involvement with fear of crime. Fear of crime is measured by three typical perception measures: neighborhood security; walking alone in the dark; and the risk of becoming a victim. The data is from Chile’s Victimization Survey....

Using a model similar to labor market models of statistical discrimination, I de- scribe how and why racial profiling can arise even when law enforcement officers are racially unbiased. Specifically, if one racial group has a higher fraction of individuals who are at risk of committing the...

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. Rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using panel data covering more than 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce...

Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime. First, one may gossip, and, provided that what is said is true, there is nothing illegal about it. Truth is an absolute defense. Second, if one may speak...

This paper modifies the optimal penalty analysis by incorporating investment incentives with external benefits. In the models examined, the recommendation that the optimal penalty should internalize the marginal social harm is no longer valid as a general rule. We focus on antitrust...

Utilizing an established economic framework grounded in Becker's (1981) path-breaking analysis of altruism and envy within the family, this paper explores the determinants of hate crimes, also known as bias-motivated crimes. Making use of a unique data set on hate crimes compiled by the FBI, we...

A criminal offence requiring Ghosh dishonesty was introduced in the UK by the Enterprise Act 2002, primarily to enhance cartel deterrence as a complement to corporate fines. Yet the first convictions resulted from a US plea bargain in 2008. This paper identifies three obstacles to enhancing...

Moral concepts affect crime supply. This idea is modelled assuming that illegal activities is habit forming. We introduce habits in a intertemporal general equilibrium framework to illegal activities and compare its outcomes with a model without habit formation. The findings are that habit (i)...