Incentives matter

Jag är i stort en anhängare av Gary Beckers teori om rationella brottslingar - i David Friedmans ord:

Criminals are rational. A mugger is a mugger for the same reason I am a professor-because that profession makes him better off, by his own standards, than any other alternative available to him. Here, as elsewhere in economics, the assumption of rationality does not imply that muggers (or economics professors) calculate the costs and benefits of available alternatives to seventeen decimal places-merely that they tend to choose the one that best achieves their objectives.

Perfekt exempel på ovanstående, även om Verone är ovanligt uttalat kalkylerande - från ABC News (artikeln innehåller ett videoklipp som startar automatiskt):

Verone said he "exercised all the alternatives" before planning to rob the Gastonia bank, which he chose at random, for a dollar, according to reports. As the day approached, Verone paid his last month's rent, donated his furniture and moved into a Hampton Inn. And on the morning of June 9, before hailing a cab to the bank, he mailed a letter to the Gaston Gazette.

"When you receive this a bank robbery will have been committed by me. This robbery is being committed by me for one dollar," he wrote, wanting people to understand that the motive for his crime was medical, not monetary. "I am of sound mind but not so much sound body."

Tidigare på temat:
- Marknadsekonomin och inbrotten, igen
- Marknadsekonomi mot inbrott