TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Mastrobuoni, Giovanni
AU  - Rivers, David A.
        TI  - Criminal Discount Factors and Deterrence
        PY  - 2016/Feb/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9769
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp9769
        AB  - The trade-off between the immediate returns from committing a crime and the future costs of punishment depends on an offender's time discounting. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in sentence length generated by a large collective pardon in Italy and provide non-parametric evidence on the extent of discounting from the raw data on recidivism and sentence length. Using a discrete-choice model of recidivism, we estimate an average annual discount factor of 0.74, although there is heterogeneity based on age, education, crime type, and nationality. Our estimates imply that the majority of deterrence is derived from the first few years in prison.
        KW  - discounting
KW  - deterrence
KW  - collective pardon
KW  - recidivism
        ER  -