When one victim's precautions against crime have spillover benefits to other victims, individuals do not take the socially optimal amount of precaution. I explore the use of criminal sanctions as a mechanism to correct this: Criminals are punished based on the level of precaution taken by the...

This study considers the effect that judicial and police efficiency exercised on crime in 25 of the 33 political-administrative divisions in Colombia during the period 2000-2011. Specifically, the study seeks to determine whether the reduction of crime was the result of increases in the cost of...

This Article is the third of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the...

This paper develops a model in which individuals gain social status among their peers for being "tough" by committing violent acts. We show that a high penalty for moderately violent acts (zero-tolerance) may yield a double dividend in that it reduces both moderate and extreme violence. The...

This paper explores the effects of alternative tax rules regarding monetary sanctions and litigation costs on the levels of criminal activity and litigation expenditure. The key insight is that taxation may affect crime not only by changing the relative expected returns from legal and criminal...

This article studies the optimal use of fines and imprisonment when an offender's level of wealth cannot be observed by the enforcement authority. I employ a model in which there are two types of offenders - a low-wealth type and a high-wealth type. The consequence of the unobservability of...