This essay provides an analytic synthesis of the contribution by economists to the study of crime and the criminal justice system. We begin by summarizing the distinctive features of the economic approach, namely a focus on rational self-seeking behavior and analysis of the consequences of interactions among groups of actors that create equilibria in a system. We then use a taxonomy suggested b...

Unskilled labor is the abundant resource in many developing countries, especially at an early stage of their development. Yet, even as at given technologies labor markets have not cleared, neo-classical economists have rejected the notion of an institutional or bargaining wage not based on competitive full employment marginal productivity fundamentals. This paper puts to rest some objections to...