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Article
Discounting and Criminals' Implied Risk Preferences
Review of Law and Economics (2015)
  • Murat C. Mungan
  • Jonathan Klick
Abstract

It is commonly assumed that potential offenders are more responsive to increases in the certainty than increases in the severity of punishment. An important implication of this assumption within the Beckerian law enforcement model is that criminals are risk-seeking. This note adds to 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.

Disciplines
Publication Date
2015
Citation Information
Murat C. Mungan and Jonathan Klick. "Discounting and Criminals' Implied Risk Preferences" Review of Law and Economics (2015)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mungan/22/