Crime Rates and Expected Sanctions: The Economics of Deterrence Revisited

Correlated payoffs in the inspection game: some theory and an application to corruption

“…Such costs would be incurred once one agrees to a bribery agreement, i.e., without being contingent on the detection of bribery. Funk (2005) contributes by introducing moral costs resulting from internal and external enforcement into the economic model of criminal behavior, where these costs depend on the crime rate, and shows that multiple equilibria result (see also Chang et al 2000 andBar-Gill andHarel 2001). We concentrate, for simplicity, on the monetary consequences caused by the missed opportunity in terms of promotions etc.…”

“…Given a fixed budget for the detection of bribery, for example, the probability that a given bribery agreement will be detected is likely to fall with the number of agreements. This assumption may yield multiple equilibria and is dealt with in the context of criminal deterrence in Schrag and Scotchmer (1997) and Bar-Gill and Harel (2001). In Cadot (1987), corruption at different hierarchical levels leads to multiple equilibria because the probability of the enforcer being fired decreases with the pervasiveness of corruption.…”

Law: Economics of Its Public Enforcement

“…This approach is consistent with the economic model, though the economic model still insists that these factors influence criminality only through the familiar pathway of individual choice between legal and illegal activities. Thus, factors influencing criminality could be that one has learned better criminal techniques from the criminals in one's social network, that one assesses the probability of punishment by observing the frequency of punishment among one's colleagues, or that one feels a lesser social stigma of offending because illegal conduct is so prevalent within one's circle (see, e.g., Sah, 1991;Bar-Gill and Harel, 2001).…”

Shop Crime and Deterrence: Evidence on Shoplifting among Young People in the Youth Lifestyle Survey (YLS)

“…The probability of arrest may decrease as the crime rates increase, for example, if the criminal enforcement resources remain constant. Bar-Gill and Harel (2001), however, suggested that δ may be positive. Inter alia, Bar-Gill and Harel suggest that 14 When the Wald test was performed for the exclusion of the deterrence variables, only the coefficients of the perceived risk of arrest were found to be jointly statistically significant in both Models 2 and 3 for males (χ 2 (3) ¼ 9.50 and χ 2 (3) ¼ 9.94, respectively).…”