IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lan/wpaper/228680000.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hanging Down Under: Capital Punishment and Deterrence in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Aidan O'Sullivan

Abstract

Variation in executions and abolition of the death penalty by year and state in Australia was used to examine the deterrent effect of the death penalty on homicides. A dataset covering 1910-2010 was collected comprising homicide rates and controls for demographic and criminal justice features. Using OLS, there was no evidence that executions have a deterrent effect. There is some evidence of a deterrent effect of capital punishment laws, but the effect is no longer significant once demographic and criminal justice variables were added to the model. However, when using exogenous variation in party-political representation to address endogeneity issues, no evidence of a deterrent effect of capital punishment was found.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Aidan O'Sullivan, 2018. "Hanging Down Under: Capital Punishment and Deterrence in Australia," Working Papers 228680000, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:lan:wpaper:228680000
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/lums/economics/working-papers/LancasterWP2018_003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Zimmerman, 2009. "Statistical Variability and the Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 11(2), pages 370-398.
    2. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    3. Mocan, H Naci & Gittings, R Kaj, 2003. "Getting Off Death Row: Commuted Sentences and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 453-478, October.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    5. Paul R. Zimmerman, 2004. "State executions, deterrence, and the incidence of murder," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 7, pages 163-193, May.
    6. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1975. "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 397-417, June.
    7. Lawrence Katz & Steven D. Levitt & Ellen Shustorovich, 2003. "Prison Conditions, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 5(2), pages 318-343, August.
    8. Hashem Dezhbakhsh & Paul H. Rubin & Joanna M. Shepherd, 2003. "Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Postmoratorium Panel Data," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 5(2), pages 344-376, August.
    9. Stephen K. Layson, 1983. "Homicide and Deterrence: Another View of the Canadian Time-Series Evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 16(1), pages 52-73, February.
    10. Kenneth L. Avio, 1979. "Capital Punishment in Canada: A Time-Series Analysis of the Deterrent Hypothesis," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 12(4), pages 647-676, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2011. "Econometric Estimates of Deterrence of the Death Penalty: Facts or Ideology?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(3), pages 448-478, August.
    2. Yang, Bijou & Lester, David, 2008. "The deterrent effect of executions: A meta-analysis thirty years after Ehrlich," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 453-460, September.
    3. Paul R. Zimmerman, 2010. "The Economics of Capital Punishment and Deterrence," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Russell Smyth, 2006. "Dead man walking: an empirical reassessment of the deterrent effect of capital punishment using the bounds testing approach to cointegration," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(17), pages 1975-1989.
    5. Berit C. Gerritzen & Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2013. "Facts or Ideology: What Determines the Results of Econometric Estimates of the Deterrence Effect of Death Penalty?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2013-04, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    6. Brett Parker, 2021. "Death Penalty Statutes and Murder Rates: Evidence From Synthetic Controls," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(3), pages 488-533, September.
    7. Naci Mocan & Kaj Gittings, 2010. "The Impact of Incentives on Human Behavior: Can We Make it Disappear? The Case of the Death Penalty," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Crime: Lessons For and From Latin America, pages 379-418, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. John J. Donohue III & Justin Wolfers, 2006. "Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate," NBER Working Papers 11982, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Gerritzen, Berit & Kirchgässner, Gebhard, 2013. "Facts or Ideology: What Determines the Results of Econometric Estimates of the Deterrence Effect of Death Penalty? A Meta-Analysis," Economics Working Paper Series 1303, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    10. Joseph A. Clougherty & Jo Seldeslachts, 2013. "The Deterrence Effects of US Merger Policy Instruments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 1114-1144, October.
    11. Isaac Ehrlich, 2010. "The Market Model of Crime: A Short Review and New Directions," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Michael Frakes & Matthew Harding, "undated". "The Deterrent Effect of Expansions in Death Penalty Eligibility Criteria," Discussion Papers 08-033, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    13. Patrick T Brandt & Tomislav V Kovandzic, 2015. "Messing Up Texas?: A Re-Analysis of the Effects of Executions on Homicides," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    14. Choe, Jongmook, 2009. "Another Look at the Deterrent Effect of Death Penalty," MPRA Paper 14071, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Paul R. Zimmerman, 2004. "State executions, deterrence, and the incidence of murder," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 7, pages 163-193, May.
    16. Carlisle E. Moody & Thomas B. Marvell, 2010. "On the Choice of Control Variables in the Crime Equation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(5), pages 696-715, October.
    17. Joanna M. Shepherd, 2004. "Murders of Passion, Execution Delays, and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 283-321, June.
    18. Steven N. Durlauf & Chao Fu & Salvador Navarro, 2011. "Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Understanding Disparate Results," Working Papers 2012-005, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    19. Angela K. Dills & Jeffrey A. Miron & Garrett Summers, 2010. "What Do Economists Know about Crime?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Crime: Lessons For and From Latin America, pages 269-302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Ethan Cohen-Cole & Steven Durlauf & Jeffrey Fagan & Daniel Nagin, 2008. "Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 11(2), pages 335-369.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Illegal Behavior; Enforcement of Law;

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lan:wpaper:228680000. 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: Giorgio Motta (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delanuk.html .

    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.