Thou shalt not covet ...": Crime, Temptations and Moral Values (original) (raw)
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“Thou shalt not covet”: Prohibitions, temptation and moral values
Journal of Public Economics, 2013
We propose a theory studying temptation in presence of both externally and internally sanctioned prohibitions. Moral values that (internally) sanction prohibited actions and their desire may increase utility by reducing self-control costs, thereby serving as partial commitment devices. We apply the model to crime and study the conditions under which agents would optimally adhere to moral values of honesty. Incentives to be moral are nonmonotonic in the crime premium. Larger external punishments increase temptation and demand for morality, so that external and internal sanctions are complements. The model helps rationalizing stylized facts that proved difficult to explain with available theories.
The Role of Moral values in the economic analysis of crime: a General equilibrium approach
1997
In this paper, we d e v elop a general equilibrium model of crime and show that law enforcement has di erent roles depending on the equilibrium characterization and the value of social norms. When an economy has a unique stable equilibrium where a fraction of the population is productive and the remaining predates, the government can choose an optimal law enforcement policy to maximize a welfare function evaluated at that steady state. If such steady state is not unique, law enforcement i s s t i l l r e l e v ant but in a completely di erent way because the steady state that prevails depends on the initial proportions of productive and predator individuals in the economy. The relative importance of these proportions can be changed through law enforcement policy.
Using Bounded Rationality to Fight Crime
Law and economics scholars have traditionally modeled criminal deterrence as a function two factors: (i) severity of punishment, and (ii) probability of punishment. Gary Becker’s (1968) seminal essay suggested that optimizing on the benefits of crime reduction and the cost of punishment and policing should be the policy objective of the criminal law (at least with respect to deterrence). However, this model has been attacked on two fronts. First, criminological data on crime rates fails to show a strong correlation between the predictions of economic models and crime rates in the real world. Second, developments in behavioral economics suggest that individuals (criminals in this case) often fail to respond rationally to incentives. This paper seeks to reconcile the tension between the results of economic theory, criminological data, and behavioral psychology, offering a more realistic goal for the criminal law: inducing second-order biases not to commit crime.
Crime, punishment and social norms
2005
We analyze the interplay between economic incentives and social norms when individuals decide whether or not to engage in criminal activity. More specifically, we assume that there is a social norm against criminal activity and that deviations from the norm result in feelings of guilt or shame. The intensity of these feelings is here endogenous in the sense that they
Journal of Business Ethics - J BUS ETHICS, 2003
The focus of the present study was the rationality of moral behaviour and moral conviction. Assumptions like "morality pays" or "good ethics is good business" are not a priori right. Whether morality as personal conviction is also economically rational or not depends in large part on the institutional setting of a society and the likelihood that immoral behaviour will be sanctioned. The systematic approach to morality thus appears to be political economy and the institutional setting: rules and laws. However, the conditions for morality depend not only on the formal structures but also on the informal structures of rules and sanctions. Hence, the systematic approach to morality is most closely linked with the culture of a society; the efficiency of individual morality depends on social conditions. It is costly for individuals and societies to establish and entertain conditions that set clear incentives for moral behaviour. In this context, moral competencies, lea...
On the Behavioral Economics of Crime
Review of Law & Economics, 2012
This paper examines the implications of the brain sciences' mechanistic model of human behavior for our understanding of crime. The standard rational-choice crime model is refined by a behavioral approach, which proposes a decision model comprising cognitive and emotional decision systems. According to the behavioral approach, a criminal is not irrational but rather 'ecologically rational,' outfitted with evolutionarily conserved decision modules adapted for survival in the human ancestral environment. Several important cognitive as well as emotional factors for criminal behavior are discussed and formalized, using tax evasion as a running example. The behavioral crime model leads to new perspectives on criminal policy-making.
Judgment and Decision, 2019
We conducted two studies using a sample of students (Experiment 1, N=84) and the general public (Experiment 2, N=412) to assess the relative and unique effects of factors suggested by three major theories of law obedience: a utility-theoretic deterrence theory (Becker, 1968), the general theory of crime (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), and the legitimacy model (Tyler, 1990). Six different types of low-level crime were considered. The probability of breaking the law increases with factors predicted by each of these theories, namely detection probability, expected fine, self-control, and legitimacy. All four factors uniquely contribute to predicting law obedience, effects are mainly additive, and no stable interaction effects are observed. The relative influence of the investigated factors varies between types of low-level crimes. This indicates that an integrative theory of why people obey the law needs to consider factors from various theories and allow for the relative influence of factors to differ among crimes. We observe systematic deviations from a basic utility-theoretic approach to law breaking. Individuals' tendency to obey the law is much higher than predicted by an approach taking into account detection probability, expected fines, and benefits only. The robust effects of interindividual differences concerning legitimacy and self-control as well as the finding that the tendency to break the law decreases with increasing benefit of the crime also conflict with a basic utility-theoretic approach to law-obedience.
Crime and punishment: Does it pay to punish?
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2012
Crime is the result of a rational distinctive balance between the benefits and costs of an illegal act. This idea was proposed by Becker more than forty years ago [1]). In this paper, we simulate a simple artificial society, in which agents earn fixed wages and can augment (or lose) wealth as a result of a successful (or not) act of crime. The probability of apprehension depends on the gravity of the crime, and the punishment takes the form of imprisonment and fines. We study the costs of the law enforcement system required for keeping crime within acceptable limits, and compare it with the harm produced by crime. A sharp phase transition is observed as a function of the probability of punishment, and this transition exhibits a clear hysteresis effect, suggesting that the cost of reversing a deteriorated situation might be much higher than that of maintaining a relatively low level of delinquency. Besides, we analyze economic consequences that arise from crimes under different scenarios of criminal activity and probabilities of apprehension.
Self-Interest, Equity, and Crime Control: A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Criminal Decision Making
Criminology, 1995
Employing the analytic technique of game theory, we attempt to answer questions about how individuals with different proclivities to use crime to accomplish ends, and different beliefs about society's fairness, are likely to respond to different incentives and disincentives that are derived from strain and neoclassical deterrence theories. Our analysis indicates that the crime control policies typically recommended by adherents of both theories are often logically invalid, given the premises upon which they are supposedly based. For example, our analysis suggests why punishment strategies like "three strikes and you're out" and "entitlement strategies" such as werfare and other short-term redistributive payment programs fail to deter crime. Finally, after including notions of equity with traditional rational choice assumptions, our analysis identifies a mix of theoretically derived strategies that may more effectively deter crime.