IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v11y2015i1p19-23n3.html

Discounting and Criminals’ Implied Risk Preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Mungan Murat C.

    (College of Law, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA Department of Economics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA)

  • Klick Jonathan

    (Law School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA)

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that potential offenders are more responsive to increases in the certainty than increases in the severity of punishment. In standard law enforcement models, this assumption implies that criminals are risk seeking. We add to the existing literature by showing that offenders who discount future monetary benefits can be more responsive to the certainty rather than the severity of punishment, even when they are risk averse, and even when their disutility from imprisonment rises proportionally (or more than proportionally) with the length of the sentence.

Suggested Citation

  • Mungan Murat C. & Klick Jonathan, 2015. "Discounting and Criminals’ Implied Risk Preferences," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 19-23, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:11:y:2015:i:1:p:19-23:n:3
    DOI: 10.1515/rle-2014-0048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2014-0048
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/rle-2014-0048?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1999. "On the Disutility and Discounting of Imprisonment and the Theory of Deterrence," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-16, January.
    3. Neilson, William S. & Winter, Harold, 1997. "On criminals' risk attitudes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 97-102, August.
    4. Pyne, Derek, 2012. "Deterrence: Increased enforcement versus harsher penalties," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 561-562.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lisa R. Anderson & Gregory DeAngelo & Winand Emons & Beth Freeborn & Hannes Lang, 2017. "Penalty Structures And Deterrence In A Two-Stage Model: Experimental Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1833-1867, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mungan, Murat C., 2019. "Salience and the severity versus the certainty of punishment," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 95-100.
    2. Avner Bar-Ilan & Bruce Sacerdote, 2001. "The Response to Fines and Probability of Detection in a Series of Experiments," NBER Working Papers 8638, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Polinsky, A. Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 2007. "The Theory of Public Enforcement of Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 403-454, Elsevier.
    4. Eide, Erling & Rubin, Paul H. & Shepherd, Joanna M., 2006. "Economics of Crime," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 205-279, December.
    5. Langlais, Eric, 2006. "Criminals and risk attitude," MPRA Paper 1149, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Sep 2006.
    6. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Paul N. Riskind, 2017. "Deterrence and the Optimal Use of Prison, Parole, and Probation," NBER Working Papers 23436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Miles Stan & Pyne Derek, 2017. "The Economics of Scams," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-18, March.
    8. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & David A Rivers, 2019. "Optimising Criminal Behaviour and the Disutility of Prison," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1364-1399.
    9. Dhammika Dharmapala & Nuno Garoupa, 2004. "Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes: An Economic Analysis," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 6(1), pages 185-207.
    10. Chang, Juin-jen & Lai, Ching-chong & Yang, C. C., 2000. "Casual police corruption and the economics of crime:: Further results," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 35-51, March.
    11. Nuno Garoupa, 1998. "Crime and punishment: Further results," Economics Working Papers 344, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    12. Éric Langlais, 2010. "Les criminels aiment-ils le risque ?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 61(2), pages 263-280.
    13. Eric Langlais, 2008. "Detection Avoidance and Deterrence: Some Paradoxical Arithmetic," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(3), pages 371-382, June.
    14. van Winden Frans A.A.M. & Ash Elliott, 2012. "On the Behavioral Economics of Crime," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 181-213, June.
    15. Dhammika Dharmapala & Richard H. McAdams, 2003. "Words that Kill? Economic Perspectives on Hate Speech and Hate Crimes," Working papers 2003-05, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    16. Kessler, Daniel P & Levitt, Steven D, 1999. "Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish between Deterrence and Incapacitation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 343-363, April.
    17. Lambsdorff, Johann & Nell, Mathias, 2007. "Fighting corruption with asymmetric penalties and leniency," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 59, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    18. Chiu, W.Henry & Madden, Paul, 2007. "Crime, punishment, and background risks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 543-555, April.
    19. Maennig, Wolfgang & Wilhelm, Stefan, 2023. "News and noise in crime politics: The role of announcements and risk attitudes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    20. Steven N. Durlauf & Daniel S. Nagin, 2010. "The Deterrent Effect of Imprisonment," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 43-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:11:y:2015:i:1:p:19-23:n:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.