One Jersey City

Oct 22nd 2009 | HIGH POINT, NORTH CAROLINA
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14699623

Why the soft approach sometimes works

LOOKING after small children is never easy. Many dribble; some bite. But for Joyce Chavis, the problem until a few years ago was that she could not let toddlers in her care step outside her house. The street was [...]

By ROBERT H. FRANK
Published: October 3, 2009

LAW enforcement policy in the United States rests implicitly on the “rational actor” model of traditional economics, which holds that people take only those actions whose benefits exceed their costs.

This model says that crime will be deterred if the expected punishment is strong enough — a prediction that has [...]