D eterrence is based on the notion that people consciously try to avoid pain and seek pleasure. It follows that by making a choice painful enough—such as the choice of crime—individuals will choose not to engage in the act. Across society as a whole, this perspective would predict that crime rates would be lowest in those places where offending evokes the most “pain” (or costs) and highest in t...

The concept of deterrence can be defined as the display of possible threats by one party to convince another party to refrain from initiating certain courses of action. The most common deterrent is that of a threat that convinces the adversary not to carry out intended actions because of costly consequences. In a nutshell, deterrence analysis comprises these three factors: • The benefits of a c...

This paper models transnational terrorism as a three-way strategic interaction involving a government that faces armed opposition at home, which may spill over in the form of acts of terrorism by the state’s opponents against the government’s external sponsor. The external sponsor also utilizes deterrence against potential terrorists, which only lowers terrorism if terrorists are not intrinsica...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 1. GOALS OF CORPORATE LIABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 A. Corporate Deterrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 B. Using Liability to Induce Corp...

A substantial body of empirical research examines how the huge expansion in incarceration in the United States since the early 1970s has influenced crime. These studies merge the effects of three conceptually distinct paths by which incarceration might reduce crime: general deterrence, specific deterrence and incapacitation. This issue of the Journal focuses specifically on the incapacitation p...

Normative environments for multi-agent systems provide means to monitor and enforce agents’ compliance to their commitments. However, when the normative space is imperfect, contracts to which norms apply may be unbalanced, and agents may exploit potential flaws to their own advantage. In this paper we analyze how a normative framework endowed with a simple adaptive deterrence sanctioning model ...

This paper investigates how an incumbent monopolist can weaken potential rivals or deter entry in the output market by manipulating the access of these rivals in the input market. We analyze two polar cases. In the first one, the input market is assumed to be competitive with the input being supplied inelastically. We show that this situation opens the door to entry deterrence. Then, we assume ...

This paper analyzes a situation in which multiple targets are exposed to a potential terrorist threat. The probability of an attack is determined endogenously in a game theoretic model. Assuming identical targets, the first-best policy requires that the investment in deterrence should be equalized across all targets. As each target tries to divert an attack to others, the symmetric equilibrium ...

During the 1998-99 season, the National Hockey League randomly varied the number of referees used across games, seemingly providing a rare opportunity to test directly the deterrence model. Combining experimental parameter estimates with an economic model, there is little evidence that the rate of offending changed substantially with the addition of a second referee. The reason, however, appear...