ABSTRACT
Until the end of the 1960s, leaving aside some scattered references, there was no systematic economic analysis of crime.
It has been suggested that the fact that all criminal activity was judged to be ‘immoral’ inhibited scientific analysis of the phenomenon, as economists’ reference models were characterized by a puritanical rigidity. It was G.Becker’s article ‘Crime and punishment: an economic approach’,1 which opened the way for economic research into the problems of criminality. The ‘economic’ aspect of criminality was approached by analysing the allocation of time and of externalities (the beneficial or harmful effects of one economic agent’s activity on other economic agents, beyond his own intention).
