This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2012
  5. Assumptions Matter: Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Assumptions Matter: Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment

  • Steven N. Durlauf
  • Chao Fu
  • Salvador Navarro
American Economic Review
vol. 102, no. 3, May 2012
(pp. 487–92)
Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

This paper examines how estimates of the deterrent effect of capital punishment depend on alternate choices of assumptions concerning the homicide process. Specific models of the homicide process represent bundles of these assumptions, which involve the unobserved heterogeneity, the relevant penalty probabilities for homicide choices, possible cross-polity parameter variation, and exchangeability between polity-time pairs that do and do not experience positive numbers of murders. We demonstrate how various assumptions have driven the conflicting findings from studies on capital punishment, and isolate a particular set of assumptions that are required to find a positive deterrent effect.

Citation

Durlauf, Steven N., Chao Fu, and Salvador Navarro. 2012. "Assumptions Matter: Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment." American Economic Review, 102 (3): 487–92. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.3.487

JEL Classification

  • K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
  • C52 Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection