The Economics of Capital Punishment - Part I: "This discussion of the economics of capital punishment is from the Becker-Posner blog and appears in the latest issue of Economists' Voice. Richard Posner goes first:



Becker-Posner Blog: The Economics of Capital Punishment--Posner: The recent execution by the State of California of the multiple murderer Stanley 'Tookie' Williams has brought renewed controversy to the practice of capital punishment... From an economic standpoint, the principal considerations in evaluating the issue of retaining capital punishment are the incremental deterrent effect of executing murderers, the rate of false positives (that is, execution of the innocent), the cost of capital punishment relative to life imprisonment without parole (the usual alternative nowadays), the utility that retributivists and the friends and family members of the murderer's victim ... derive from execution, and the disutility that fervent opponents of capital punishment, along with relatives and friends of the defendant, experience. The utility comparison seems a standoff, and I will ignore it...



Early empirical analysis by Isaac Ehrlich found a substantial incremental deterrent effect of capital punishment, a finding that coincides with the common sense of the situation: it is exceedingly rare for a defendant who has a choice to prefer being executed to being imprisoned f"