Estimating the impact of the death penalty on murder

American Law and Economics Review

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 249-309

  Donohue, John J ^a   Wolfers, Justin ^b  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950804470     PISSN: 14657252     EISSN: 14657260     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/aler/ahp024     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Anderson, David. 2002. "The Deterrence Hypothesis and Picking Pockets at the Pickpocket's Hanging," 4 American Law and Economics Review 295.
2. Ayres, Ian, and John Donohue. 2003. "Shooting Down the 'More Guns, Less Crime' Hypothesis," 55 Stanford Law Review 1193.
3. Ayres, Ian, and John Donohue. 2009. "Yet Another Refutation of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis-With Some Help From Moody and Marvell," 6 Econ Journal Watch 35-59.
4. Becker, Gary. 2006. "On the Economics of Capital Punishment," 3 The Economists' Voice art. 4. Available at http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol3/iss3/art4.
5. Berk, R. 2005. "New Claims about Executions and General Deterrence: Deja Vu All Over Again?" 2 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 303-30.
6. Bertrand, Marianne, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?" 119 Quarterly Journal of Economics 249-75.
7. Bonczar, Thomas P., and Tracy L. Snell. U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2003. "Capital Punishment, 2002," 8 Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin 1-17.
8. Bowers, William, and Glenn Pierce. 1975. "The Illusion of Deterrence in Isaac Ehrlich's Research on Capital Punishment," 85 Yale Law Journal 187-92.
9. Butterfield, Fox. 2004. "Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in the U.S.," New York Times May 8.
10. Cameron, Samuel. 1994. "A Review of the Econometric Evidence on the Effects of Capital Punishment," 23 Journal of Socio-Economics 197-214.
11. Cohen-Cole, Ethan, Steven Durlauf, Jeffrey Fagan, and Daniel Nagin. 2009. "Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effects of Capital Punishment," American Law and Economics Review 10.1093/aler/ahn001.
12. Cook, Philip J. 2009. "Potential Savings from Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina," American Law and Economics Review 10.1093/aler/ahp022.
13. Death Penalty Information Center. 2004. "Experts Question 'Quick Fix' to New York's Death Penalty." Available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=1111&scid=.
14. Dezhbakhsh, Hashem, Paul Rubin, and Joanna M. Shepherd 2003. "Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Postmoratorium Panel Data," 5 American Law and Economics Review 344.
15. Dezhbakhsh, Hashem, and Joanna M. Shepherd. 2006. "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Evidence from a Judicial Experiment," 44 Economic Inquiry 512-35.
16. Dieter, Richard, and Death Penalty Information Center. 1995. "On the Front Line: Law Enforcement Views on the Death Penalty," Poll. Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center.
17. Donohue, John, and Steven D. Levitt. 2001. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," 116 Quarterly Journal of Economics 379-420.
18. Donohue, John, and Peter Siegelman. 1998. "Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Social Programs in the Battle against Crime," 27 Journal of Legal Studies 1.
19. Donohue, John, and Justin Wolfers. 2005. "Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate," 58 Stanford Law Review 791.
20. Donohue, John, and Justin Wolfers. 2005. "The Death Penalty: No Evidence of Deterrence," 3 The Economists Voice art. 3. Available at http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol3/iss5/art3.
21. Donohue, John, Abhay Aneja, and Alexandria Zhang. 2009. "The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy." Yale Law School Working Paper, 1-34.
22. Ehrlich, Isaac. 1975. "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death," 65 American Economic Review 397-417.
23. Ehrlich, Isaac. 1977. "Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Further Thoughts and Additional Evidence," 85 Journal of Political Economy August 741-88.
24. Ehrlich, Isaac, and Zhiqiang Liu. 1999. "Sensitivity Analysis of the Deterrence Hypothesis: Let's Keep the Econ in Econometrics," 42 Journal of Law and Economics 455-88.
25. Ekelund, Robert, John Jackson, Rand Ressler, and Robert Tollison. 2006. "Marginal Deterrence and Multiple Murders," 72 Southern Economic Journal 521-41.
26. Fagan, Jeffrey. 2006. "Death and Deterrence Redux: Science, Law and Causal Reasoning on Capital Punishment," 4 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 255-99.
27. Fagan, Jeffrey, Franklin E. Zimring, and Amanda Geller. 2006. "Capital Punishment andCapitalMurder: Market Share and theDeterrent Effects of the Death Penalty," 84 Texas Law Review 1803-67.
28. Freeman, Richard. 2005. "Labour Market InstitutionsWithout Blinders: The Debate Over Flexibility and Labour Market Performance," 19 International Economic Journal 129.
29. Frum, David. 2006. "Why Australia Needs the Death Penalty," American Enterprise Institute for Policy Research. Available at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23966/pub_detail.asp (accessed June 9, 2006).
30. Fryer, Roland, Paul Heaton, Steven Levitt, and Kevin Murphy. 2005. "Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 11318, 1-65.
31. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security to consider H.R. 2934, the Terrorist Penalties Enhancement Act of 2003, to strengthen penalties for terrorist offenses. 108th Congress, Second Session, Apr. 21, 2004, p. 24.
32. Hjalmarsson, Randi. 2009. "Does Capital Punishment Have a 'Local' Deterrent Effect on Homicides?" American Law and Economics Review 10.1093/aler/ahn004.
33. Katz, L., S. Levitt, and E. Shustorovich. 2003. "Prison Conditions, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence," 5 American Law and Economics Review 318.
34. Kovandzic, Tomislav, L. Vieraitis, and D. Boots. 2009. "Does the Death Penalty Save Lives? New Evidence from State Panel Data, 1977 to 2006," 8 Criminology and Public Policy 803-43.
35. Kuziemko, Ilyana. 2006. "Does the Threat of the Death Penalty Affect Plea Bargaining in Murder Cases? Evidence from New York's 1995 Reinstatement of Capital Punishment," 8 American Law and Economics Review 116-42.
36. Levitt, Steven D. 1998. "Why Do Increased Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Crime: Deterrence, Incapacitation, or Measurement Error?" 36(July) Economic Inquiry 353-72.
37. Levitt, Steven. 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply," 92 American Economic Review 1244-50.
38. Liu, Zhiqiang. 2004. "Capital Punishment and the Deterrence Hypothesis: Some New Insights and Empirical Evidence," 30 Eastern Economic Journal 237-58.
39. Mocan, H. Naci, and R. Kaj Gittings. 2003. "Getting Off Death Row: Commuted Sentences and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment," 46 Journal of Law and Economics 470.
40. Moody, C. E., and T. B. Marvell. 2009. "The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws," 5 Econ Journal Watch 269-93.
41. Morgenthau, Robert. 1995. "What ProsecutorsWon't Tell You," The New York Times (Feb. 7 (1995). Available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDA1130F934A35751C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1.
42. Narayan, Paresh, and Russell Smyth. 2006. "Dead Man Walking: An Empirical Reassessment of the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment using the Bounds Testing Approach to Cointegration," 38 Applied Economics 1975-89.
43. National Research Council. 2005. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
44. Nerlove, Marc. 2002. Essays in Panel Data Econometrics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
45. Radelet, Michael L. 2008. "Some Examples of Post-Furman Botched Executions." Available at (accessed February 25, 2009).
46. Radelet, M., and R. Akers. 1996. "Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts," 87 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1-16.
47. Radelet, M., and T. Lacock. 2009. "Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?: The Views of Leading Criminologists," 99 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 489-508.
48. Raphael, Steven, and Michael Stoll, eds. 2009. Do Prisons Make Us Safer? The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
49. Robinson, Paul H., and John M. Darley. 2004. "Does Criminal Law Deter? A Behavioral Science Investigation," 24 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 173-205. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=660742.
50. Roman, John K., Aaron Chalfin, Aaron Sundquist, and Carly R. Knight. 2009. "Reassessing the Cost of the Death Penalty Using Quasi-Experimental Methods: Evidence from Maryland," American Law and Economics Review 10.1093/aler/ahp023.
51. Rubin, Paul. 2006a. "Reply to Donohue and Wolfers on the Death Penalty and Deterrence," 3 The Economists' Voice article 4. Available at http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol3/iss5/art4.
52. Rubin, Paul. 2006b. "Statistical Evidence on Capital Punishment and the Deterrence of Homicide." Testifying on Feb. 1, 2006 in hearings on "An Examination of the Death Penalty in the United States," Senate Judiciary Committee. Available at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/TestimonyPaulRubin.pdf.
53. Shepherd, Joanna. 2005. "Deterrence versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts among States," 104 Michigan Law Review 203-56.
54. Spelman, William. 2005. "Jobs or Jails: The Crime Drop in Texas," 24 Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 133-65.
55. Sunstein, C., and A. Vermeule. 2005. "Is Capital Punishment Morally Required?" 58 Stanford Law Review 706.
56. U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2004. Homicide trends in the U.S., "Justifiable Homicides." Available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/justify.htm.
57. Yang, Bijou, and David Lester. 2008. "The Deterrent Effect of Executions: A Metaanalysis Thirty Years after Ehrlich," 36 Journal of Criminal Justice 453-60.
58. Zimmerman, Paul R. 2004. "State Executions, Deterrence, and the Incidence of Murder," 7 Journal of Applied Economics 163-93.
59. Zimmerman, Paul R. 2009. "Statistical Variability and the Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty," American Law and Economics Review 10.1093/aler/ahp003.
60. Zimring, Franklin E. 2008. "Criminology and Its Discontents: The American Society of Criminology 2007 Sutherland Address," 46 (May) Criminology 255-66.
61. Zimring, Franklin, Jeffrey Fagan, and David Johnson. Forthcoming. "Executions, Deterrence and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities."