Sunday, May 14, 2006

Becker vs Miron on Capital Punishment

Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, says in a recent column:
I support executing some people convicted of murder because – and only because – I believe that it deters other murders.
Jeff Miron, who teaches the Economics of Crime course at Harvard, says in a recent blog post:
Mountains of social science evidence have failed to uncover a substantial deterrent effect of the death penalty.
Now I don't feel so bad that macroeconomists seem never to agree with one another.