ABSTRACT
At a party, upon learning that I am an economist, it is not uncommon for someone to ask me, “What’s going on in the stock market?” or “Do you think this recession is over?” No one has ever asked me if I think capital punishment is a deterrent to crime, if drugs should be legalized, or whether crime rates are likely to rise in response to higher unemployment rates—yet many economists, including me, spend as much, if not more, time studying, thinking, and lecturing about these issues than about recent movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Index or the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product.
