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Economics of Crime
A Category Archive (64 entries)
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March 23, 2013
Cost-benefit Analysis
Garett Jones
When people have little incentive to behave well, and when nobody is watching, what do people do? The last few years have given us millions of opportunities to answer that question as people living in foreclosed homes decided whether to... MORE
March 15, 2013
Economic Philosophy
David Henderson
UPDATE: Paul Krugman makes the point that Matt Yglesias and I make. Personal Experience and Principle Various friends on Facebook this morning were celebrating the fact that Republican Senator Robert Portman has come out (no pun intended) in favor of... MORE
January 31, 2013
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
Very cool idea from a former taxi driver on MR:[I]f your car is ever stolen, your first calls should be to every cab company in the city. You offer a $50 reward to the driver who finds it AND a... MORE
January 12, 2013
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
While in D.C. these last few days, I've been following more closely the David Gregory case. In case you haven't, here's a recap. David Gregory, the host of NBC's Meet the Press, displayed an illegal 30-bullet capacity gun magazine on... MORE
December 27, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
I'm guessing that most of you have heard about the Westchester County, New York newspaper that published a comprehensive list of all the households in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties that were listed with the government as containing a resident... MORE
December 15, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
One thing my co-blogger Bryan and I agree on is that proposing a bet is a good way of making people fess up to whether they're really confident, especially about their extreme statements. Bryan might have said it differently than... MORE
December 13, 2012
Cost-benefit Analysis
Bryan Caplan
Tyler Cowen often calls Alex Tabarrok the best truth-tracker in Carow Hall. With good reason. When I ask Alex questions, he's consistently careful, direct, and accurate. When I investigate his assertions, they check out. I trust Alex - even when... MORE
October 24, 2012
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
The death penalty has fallen into disfavor in recent years. But what's the long-run trend? I've intermittently wondered about this for over a decade. Last night, I finally decided to check.I found a time series of total U.S. executions from... MORE
October 22, 2012
moral reasoning
Garett Jones
The pattern of individual, decentralized human evil I've discussed in recent posts is an underappreciated argument against the welfare state. If a substantial fraction of the people around us are money-burners and perverse punishers, how much sympathy will voters have... MORE
October 9, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
"Bostonian," one of the commenters on my previous post on immigration quoted from an article by my Hoover colleague, Victor Davis Hanson. So I read the whole thing. There's a lot of meaty content, good and weak, in his article,... MORE
September 27, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
UPDATE: Welcome visitors from Instapundit. I blogged briefly about the bottom one percent a few months ago and the Hoover Institution has now published an expanded piece on the issue. Here are the opening paragraphs: We often hear a lot,... MORE
September 15, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Co-blogger Bryan has done a good job so far of persuading me that my attraction to Malcolm X when I was 26 years old was unjustified. I'm not complaining. It's always good to realize when one's old thinking was wrong,... MORE
May 31, 2012
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Among other ventures, this concern has led to a rather bizarre, and highly expensive, preoccupation with port security, driven by the assumptions, apparently, 1) that after manufacturing their device at great expense and effort overseas, an atomic terrorist or desperately... MORE
April 13, 2012
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
David Henderson
One of my favorite passages from a novel, Assault on a Queen, seems a propos on the weekend during which a lot of people are doing their taxes. For those of you who haven't read it, it's about a small... MORE
December 30, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
Tyler Cowen has a thoughtful answer to the question, "Does wealth equal power?" (Of course, the obvious answer is "Yes, it equals power over material things but no, it doesn't equal power over other things. It might give one power... MORE
November 22, 2011
Regulation
David Henderson
The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership--and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded... MORE
August 24, 2011
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
Compare these GAO statistics on "Federal Prison Illegal Alien Inmates" (p.23) to the Bureau of Justice Statistics table on the "Number of Sentenced Inmates in Federal Prisons" (p.10). Both sets of figures come from c.2003. Tell me what you see.... MORE
August 22, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
The public has now endured a decade of dire warnings about the imminence of a terrorist atomic attack. In 2004, the former CIA spook Michael Scheuer proclaimed on television's 60 Minutes that it was "probably a near thing," and in... MORE
July 25, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
It's short and so I'll quote the whole thing: One doesn't want to lean too heavily on human tragedies to make political points, but since a lot of our politics rightly concerns itself with how to minimize the occurrence of... MORE
July 14, 2011
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Bryan Caplan
A question that came up at the Silver Diner after last night's debate:What fraction of police brutality could have been avoided if the victims has simply been respectful and submissive vis-a-vis the police?The question isn't intended to "blame the victim,"... MORE
July 8, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
New York. Associated Press. June 26 In the wake of last week's deadly shooting at a Long Island pharmacy, Sen. Charles Schumer says the federal government must work harder to fight prescription drug abuse. Schumer said Sunday that the abuse... MORE
July 5, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Yesterday, I wrote the following letter to the Monterey Herald about a local incident that has created a lot of publicity: If reporter Julia Reynolds quoted Sheriff Miller correctly ("Rights Violated, Sergeant Claims," Herald, July 3), then Miller has made... MORE
June 23, 2011
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
The latest U.S. Department of Justice National Inmate Survey confirms my earlier report that prison staff commit more prison rape than prisoners. Lovisa Stannow of Just Detention International boils down the results in Reason:The U.S. Department of Justice recently released... MORE
June 22, 2011
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Jason Collins writes, Incarceration removes young men from the mating market during their mating prime. As the propensity to commit crime is heritable, the removal of criminals from the mating market will reduce the frequency of the genes associated with... MORE
June 10, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
NOT from The Onion "Do another Season of The Wire," he [Attorney General Eric Holder] said to cheers. "That's actually at a minimum...if you don't do a season, do a movie. We've done HBO movies, this is a series that... MORE
June 3, 2011
Economic History
Bryan Caplan
[Warning: Spoilers for a 2004 movie].At the end of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, we discover a bizarre conspiracy: In the 1970s, a group of people whose loved ones were murdered move to the middle of nowhere in order to... MORE
May 18, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
It wasn't until the U.S. government's crackdown on internet poker last week that I came to realize that the primary determinant of where I stand with respect to government interference in activities comes down to the answer to a simple... MORE
May 14, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Washington Post columnist and former Bush speech writer, Michael Gerson, gives a strange argument against Ron Paul. Paul had defended people's right to put what they want in their own bodies, up to and including heroin. To make fun of... MORE
May 3, 2011
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
David Henderson
Will Twitter Undercut Censorship? Although I know my vote doesn't matter and I agree with Bryan Caplan about most of his criticisms of democracy, I'm somewhat of a political junkie. So I've been on line all evening watching the highlights... MORE
April 25, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In his recent post on pacifism, co-blogger Bryan cites an earlier post on the same issue. He wrote: Even if militaries don't deliberately target innocent bystanders, they almost always wind up recklessly endangering their lives. If a policeman fought crime... MORE
January 1, 2011
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
I asked a hypothetical question in my previous post today. I'm glad that Prakhar Goel, one of the three people to whom I addressed the question, was willing to participate. Thank you, Prakhar. And, unlike commenter TA, I don't think... MORE
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In the comments on my post yesterday, Prakhar Goel, Patrick R. Sullivan, and Shayne Cook were critical of my views on U.S. foreign policy. All three implicitly or explicitly seemed to favor the U.S. government's attack on Afghanistan in 2001.... MORE
December 11, 2010
Politics and Economics
David Henderson
Pointing to Communist crimes is not meant to "trivialize" the destruction of European Jewry, nor can it do so. The massacre of the Jews was one of the worst things that ever happened. But even supposing that it was the... MORE
November 1, 2010
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
A reader recommends a paper by William K. Black. "Control fraud" theory explains why the most damaging forms of fraud are situations in which those that control the company or the nation use it as a fraud vehicle. The CEO,... MORE
October 20, 2010
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In today's Wall Street Journal appears a "Notable and Quotable" from Walter Russell Mead. It's from a longer post he did about the drug war. Mead's contribution to the discussion is to point out that we should, as a way... MORE
September 6, 2010
Public Goods
David Henderson
Our analysis suggests not that gangs cause violence, but that violence causes gangs. In other words, gangs form in response to government's failure to protect youths against violence. The surprising implication of our insight is that efforts to reduce gang... MORE
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In tonight's 60 Minutes episode, the lead item was on the huge amount of Medicare fraud that takes place. Scam artists get lists of patients, lists of expensive items they can bill to Medicare, and a bank account. Then they... MORE
August 10, 2010
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In the video on this page, economist Mark Kleiman, whose expertise is on the drug war, tells of an interesting approach taken by a Hawaiian judge to make people keep their promises not to use illegal drugs. If I were... MORE
June 29, 2010
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
In the United States, stereotypical kidnappings are almost non-existent. But in some Third World countries - especially Latin America - the problem's quite serious. Mexico's up to 8000 reported kidnappings per year, and experts plausibly claim that over 90% of... MORE
June 20, 2010
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
I recently read a paper by Loyola prof (and GMU Ph.D.) Dan D'Amico. The first part of the paper explained that among crime researchers, there is a strong consensus that the U.S. government is too punitive - even though the... MORE
May 21, 2010
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Here's are some excerpts from a speech that Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg gave this week: As we tear through the statute book, we'll do something no government ever has: We will ask you which laws you think should... MORE
May 12, 2010
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
I've learned that I'm not the only person to propose weight classes for prisons. Here's Philip Ellenbogen in the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems:As discussed earlier in this section, a victim of prison rape is often much smaller... MORE
May 10, 2010
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
David Henderson
I noticed that none of the commenters on my previous post today commented on the merits of my argument. [Actually, commenter #6, Douglass Holmes, did, but that came in after I started writing this post.] I was disappointed. Instead, most... MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
David Henderson
Your Papers Please It's not hard for me to take sides on whether police in Arizona should be able to stop people simply on suspicion that they're in the United States illegally. I think this is one more step on... MORE
May 9, 2010
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
Why do we have separate men's and women's prisons? You don't have to envision the alternative for long to have your answer: Co-ed prisons would be a living hell of rape and brutality. Or perhaps I should say: Even more... MORE
April 23, 2010
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Tyler Cowen has written an excellent review of Daniel Okrent's new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Cowen summarizes how the stars lined up in the late nineteen teens for prohibition to occur. One thing he misses,... MORE
April 17, 2010
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
In a discussion last week about the fact that Bryan Caplan, who opposes government funding of higher education, nevertheless works in a government-funded university, one commenter, Chipotle, wrote: If you were walking home one night and you saw a cat... MORE
December 18, 2009
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
A junior colleague of mine, Noah Myung, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cal Tech, told me the following hilarious story. He was a math/econ major at UCLA and had just completed a course on game theory, taught by... MORE
December 11, 2009
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Some students and I, in a special readings class, were working our way through some chapters of David Friedman's law and economics book, Law's Order. In an interesting section where he makes a persuasive case for allowing a market in... MORE
October 23, 2009
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
One of the views I had accepted uncritically is that all of the people at Enron charged with crimes really were guilty. But Bill Anderson's interesting article today questions some of that. Also, he points out that Fortune reporter Bethany... MORE
October 6, 2009
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
From Wikipedia:The word "rob" came via French from Late Latin words (e.g. deraubare) of Germanic origin, from Common Germanic raub- = "clothes", as in old times (before modern cheap mechanized mass production of clothes) one main target of robbers was... MORE
August 25, 2009
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
If I had to serve time, I'd prefer to be sent to a for-profit prison factory. The main reason: I think my employer would make an effort to protect me from severe abuse. After all, a victimized indentured servant is... MORE
June 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My wife and I watch the Fox News Channel more than any other channel. It's not because we agree with everything, or even most of what, they say. My main reasons are twofold: (1) They bring up issues that the... MORE
March 29, 2009
Economics of Crime
Arnold Kling
Cato sent me a copy of In the Name of Justice, edited by Timothy Lynch. It's not my field, so I just read Lynch's introduction. He describes a litany of ways in which our criminal justice system takes away Constitutional... MORE
February 12, 2009
Economics of Crime
David Henderson
Two judges in Pennsylvania are alleged to have taken bribes in return for sentencing teenagers to jail. One case was that of Ms. Hillary Transue: Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to... MORE
January 19, 2009
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
When I was filling out my customs form for Singapore, I was chilled to see the all-capital letters, "DEATH FOR DRUGS IN SINGAPORE." Philosophically, I have nothing against the death penalty, but of course I have everything against drug prohibition.* ... MORE
December 18, 2007
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
Serial killers are, contrary to movies and television, incredibly rare. Still, Wikipedia lists well over a hundred convicted serial killers. In contrast, vigilantes (a la the fictional Dexter) are almost non-existent. How many can you name, besides Bernard Goetz, who... MORE
October 8, 2007
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
I'd guess that fictional serial killers outnumber real serial killers by at least 100:1. After all, how many movies and t.v. shows are there about serial killers - and how many are there in real life? That's hardly surprising -... MORE
June 29, 2007
Economics of Crime
Arnold Kling
Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev write, We distinguished between those who directly or indirectly produce goods and services that we consume—who Adam Smith called productive labor—and those who we term guard labor: the police, private security guards, military personnel and... MORE
June 13, 2007
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
These official stats surprised even me. Back in 1980, State correctional facilities had 9 violent criminals for every drug offender. By 2003, that ratio was 2.6:1. Clearly, the War on Drugs launched during my teen years was not just rhetoric... MORE
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
Most economists have a glib answer: The worse your legal options, the better crime looks. But the more I think about this response, the weaker it seems. Here's a striking fact about crime: A lot of it is almost never... MORE
May 15, 2007
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
You've read Somin; now try Peter Klein.... MORE
May 11, 2007
Economics of Crime
Bryan Caplan
My collaborator Ilya Somin has a fascinating post on the law and economics of The Godfather. It's a must read. My only quibble is that it overlooks this part: Michael: My father is no different than any powerful man, any... MORE
April 30, 2007
Economics of Crime
Arnold Kling
Bernard Harcourt writes, we should not be surprised that there are so many persons with mental illness behind bars today. We deal with perceived deviance differently than we did in the past: instead of getting treatment, persons who are viewed... MORE
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