Beyond the State of Nature: Introducing Social Interactions in the Economic Model of Crime

Weele, van der; Joel, J

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1655323

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Further, he argues that the effects of enforcement policy may depend on how policy affects the visibility of a criminal action to peers, as visibility affects the reputational gain from crime. Finally, our model is related to the broader literature in economics that links crimes with social norms and peer effects (see Van der Weele [2012] for an overview). These papers often consider rather reduced form models to represent social interactions.…”

Section: Some Stylized Facts and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Status‐Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero‐Tolerance

Dur

Weele

2013

J Public Economic Theory

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This paper offers a new argument for why a more aggressive enforcement of minor offenses (zero-tolerance) may yield a double dividend in that it reduces both minor offenses and more severe crime. We develop a model of criminal subcultures in which people gain social status among their peers for being "tough" by committing criminal acts. As zero-tolerance keeps relatively "gutless" people from committing a minor offense, the signaling value of that action increases, which makes it attractive for some people who would otherwise commit more severe crime. If social status is sufficiently important in criminal subcultures, zerotolerance reduces crime across the board.

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Section: Some Stylized Facts and Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Status‐Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero‐Tolerance

Dur

Weele

2013

J Public Economic Theory

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“…A crackdown -i.e. the concentration of high-frequency or systematic controls in a limited amount of time and/or on a delimited geographical area or subset of the population -is a type of policy intervention widely used by law-enforcement institutions to fight against crime (Sherman, 1990;Schargrodsky, 2002, 2004;Kleiman, 2009;Eeckhout et al, 2010;van der Weele, 2012). It was one of the most important policing policies in the U.S (Sherman, 1990) as well as in China in the 1980s (Schultz, 1989), and has still great relevance worldwide.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Efficiency of Crackdowns: A Lab-in-The-Field Experiment in Public Transportations

2016

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The concentration of high frequency controls in a limited period of time ("crackdowns") constitutes an important feature of many law-enforcement policies around the world. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive investigation on the relative efficiency and effectiveness of various crackdown policies using a lab-in-the-field experiment with real passengers of a public transport service. We introduce a novel game, the daily public transportation game, where subjects have to decide, over many periods, whether to buy or not a ticket knowing that there might be a control. Our results show that (a) concentrated crackdowns are less effective and efficient than random controls; (b) prolonged crackdowns reduce fare-dodging during the period of intense monitoring but induces a burst of fraud as soon as they are withdrawn; (c) pre-announced controls induces more fraud in the periods without control. Overall, we also observe that real fare-dodgers fraud more in the experiment than non-faredodgers.

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Ambiguity on Audits and Cooperation in a Public Goods Game

2014

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Abstract:We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the other group members is centrally sanctioned and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being audited, both before and after audits are definitely withdrawn. We find that when individuals have initially experienced systematic audits, they decrease both their beliefs and their contributions almost immediately after audits are withdrawn. In contrast, when audits were initially less frequent and more irregular, they maintain high beliefs and continue cooperating long after audits have been withdrawn. This identifies the compliance effect of irregularity and uncertainty due to learning difficulties. By increasing both the frequency of audits and the severity of sanctions, we also identify an educative effect of frequent and high sanctions on further cooperation.

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Beyond the State of Nature: Introducing Social Interactions in the Economic Model of Crime

Cited by 4 publications

References 87 publications

Status‐Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero‐Tolerance

Status‐Seeking in Criminal Subcultures and the Double Dividend of Zero‐Tolerance

The Efficiency of Crackdowns: A Lab-in-The-Field Experiment in Public Transportations

Ambiguity on Audits and Cooperation in a Public Goods Game

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