On the Evolutionary Dynamics of Crime

Ross Cressman, Jean-Francois Wen and William Morrison ()

Canadian Journal of Economics, 1998, vol. 31, issue 5, 1101-1117

Abstract: In this paper, the authors examine the economics of crime deterrence from an evolutionary perspective. A bimatrix game is used to model the interaction between populations of property owners and (potential) criminals, given exogenous levels of public policing and criminal sanctions. A crucial element in the authors' analysis is the private effort property owners exert to prevent theft. The dynamics show that the crime rate is cyclical over time and the average crime rate over the cycle is invariant to the magnitude of criminal sanctions. Furthermore, increased public policing raises the average crime rate until a threshold level of policing is reached where the crime rate falls.

JEL-codes: C72 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0008-4085%281998 ... TEDOC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O (text/html)
only available to JSTOR subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cje:issued:v:31:y:1998:i:5:p:1101-1117

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economic ... ionen/membership.php

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Zhiqi Chen

More articles in Canadian Journal of Economics from Canadian Economics Association Canadian Economics Association Prof. Werrner Antweiler, Treasurer UBC Sauder School of Business 2053 Main Mall Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Prof. Werner Antweiler ().