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28 Sup. Ct. Econ. Rev. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/supeco28 and id is 1 raw text is: Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Missing Literature Alex Raskolnikov* This review of the criminal deterrence literature focuses on the questions that are largely missing from many recent ex- cellent and comprehensive reviews of that literature and even from the literature itself. By missing I mean, first, questions that criminal deterrence scholars have ignored ei- ther completely or to a large extent. These questions range from fundamental (the distributional analysis of the criminal justice system) to those hidden in plain sight (economic analysis of misdemeanors), to those that are well-known yet mostly overlooked (the role of positive incentives, offender's mental state, and celerity of punishment). Second, I use missing to refer to the areas where substantial relevant knowledge exists but is largely disregarded within the crimi- nal deterrence research program. The empirical analysis of environmental and tax compliance is a stark example. Finally, I stretch missing to describe topics that have been both studied and reviewed but where substantial challenges re- main. These include the theoretical explanation for the role of offense history, the proper accounting for the offender's gains, the estimation of the costs of various crimes, and the cost-benefit analysis of crime-reduction policies. * Alex Raskolnikov is Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law, Columbia Law School. The author is grateful to Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Bernard Harcourt, Bert Huang, Murat Mungan, and Dan Richman for valuable comments and suggestions. Email: arasko@law.columbia.edu. Electronically published: September 18, 2020 © 2020 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 978-0-226-64653-4/2020/0028-0001$10.00 1