The thief's wages: theft and human capital development

摘要

In this paper, a model is developed to investigate whether theft can be economically rational. It is shown that heterogeneity in capital accumulation rates (or 'learning ability') cannot create any noticeable difference in incentives to steal. Further heterogeneity in instantaneous opportunity cost is both too low and runs in the wrong direction to have any explanatory role. However, heterogeneity in discount rates in combination with differences in initial human capital can create an incentive for theft. The model is calibrated from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 with data from 1997 to 2011.