One main motive behind lengthy prison terms for serious crime is to deter potential offenders from engaging in crime … discount future events when balancing the immediate utility of the crime and the costs of a potential future punishment. If … various crime indicators from administrative registers spanning over 18 years. Our results show that high discount rates …

local crime rates. We assess the effects of a recent reform in California that caused a sharp and permanent reduction in the … violent crime and evidence of modest effects on property crime, auto theft in particular. These effects are considerably … considerably lower. We corroborate theses cross-county results with a synthetic-cohort analysis of state crime rates in California …