En hel del forskning finner att straff avskräcker brottslighet, i linje med ekonomipristagaren Gary Beckers teori, presenterad i ”Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach”. Nu visar ny experimentell forskning, presenterad i ”Theft and Deterrence”, följande:

We report results from economic experiments of decisions that are best described as petty larceny, with high school and college students who can anonymously steal real money from each other. Our design allows exogenous variation in the rewards of crime, and the penalty and probability of detection. We find that the probability of stealing is increasing in the amount of money that can be stolen, and that it is decreasing in the probability of getting caught and in the penalty for getting caught. Furthermore, the impact of the certainty of getting caught is larger when the penalty is bigger, and the impact of the penalty is bigger when the probability of getting caught is larger.

Den klassiska nationalekonomiska insikten om att incitament spelar roll för mänskligt beteende har fortfarande en del som talar för sig.