Income variables and the measures of gains from crime

There is ambiguity in the empirical studies of crime economics regarding various income variables used to proxy the expected net gains from crime. As a result, the empirical findings are often mixed or contradictory to one another. This note provides a theoretical argument that relates the net expected gains from crime to a measure of income inequality (the Gini coefficient) and the mean income of a society, thereby clarifying the ambiguity. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.