Abstract:
We report results from economic experiments that provide a direct test of the hypothesis that
criminal behavior responds rationally to changes in the possible rewards and in the probability
and severity of punishment. The experiments involve decisions that are best described as petty
larceny, and are done using high school and college students who can anonymously take real
money from each other. We find that decisions about whether and how much to steal are, in
general, rational and responsive to the variations in tradeoffs, and sometimes, though not always,
to the overall availability of criminal opportunities.