Recent studies introduce the notion of treating autobiographical memories of past pleasurable experiences as assets and expanding the discounted utility model to include the utility of memories of past consumption. Recent studies in psychology have found that involuntary autobiographical...

This paper offers one of the first economic analyses of scams. Its major finding is that, unlike other crimes, imperfect enforcement may increase victimization by deterring only low-ability scammers whose failed attempts would otherwise alert potential victims before encounters with high-ability...

We model deterrence with costly punishment when criminals have different abilities. Abilities are unobserved by both criminals and the courts. Based on past successes, criminals update their priors on being high-ability criminals. Courts cannot observe a criminal’s total past offenses. They do...