Discounting and Criminals’ Implied Risk Preferences

Authors

Murat C. Mungan, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow
Jonathan Klick

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2015

Journal Title

Review of Law & Economics

ISSN

1555-5879

DOI

10.1515/rle-2014-0048

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.

First Page

19

Last Page

23

Num Pages

5

Volume Number

11

Issue Number

1

Publisher

De Gruyter

Recommended Citation

Murat C. Mungan & Jonathan Klick, Discounting and Criminals’ Implied Risk Preferences, 11 Rev. L. & Econ. 19 (2015).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1872