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"Behavioral Criminal Law and Economics"

By Douglas A. Berman

The interesting title of this post is the title of this interesting looking new paper just posted on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: A behavioral economics literature identifies how behaviorally-derived assumptions affect the economic analysis of criminal law and public law enforcement.  We review and extend that literature.  Specifically, we consider the effect of cognitive biases, prospect theory, hedonic adaptation, hyperbolic discounting, fairness preferences, and other deviations from standard economic assumptions on the optimal rules for deterring potential offenders and for regulating (or motivating) potential crime victims, legislators, police, prosecutors, judges, and juries.

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).