Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?

Death penalty has been practiced by most societies in the past but a growing number of countries have abolished this sanction. Among all debates about whether to retain or abolish death penalty, the effect of death penalty on deterring homicides is the most controversial arguing point. This paper ai...

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Main Authors: Du, Shangzhu, Sheng, Chao, Wen, Shaoyi
Other Authors: Feng Qu
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/62767
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-627672019-12-10T12:17:19Z Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides? Du, Shangzhu Sheng, Chao Wen, Shaoyi Feng Qu School of Humanities and Social Sciences DRNTU::Humanities DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic theory Death penalty has been practiced by most societies in the past but a growing number of countries have abolished this sanction. Among all debates about whether to retain or abolish death penalty, the effect of death penalty on deterring homicides is the most controversial arguing point. This paper aims at examining the significance of deterrent effects of death penalty, taking into consideration country-specific economic climates, in order to provide policy makers with meaningful insights so as to make better-informed decisions. In this paper, we employ detailed information of death penalty and its executions in 50 U.S. states and 49 other countries in years 1995-2012 to conduct OLS and 2SLS regression analysis. Besides, we also explore whether the strength of the deterrent effect varies with economic factors, through adding in interaction of death penalty with GDP per capita and unemployment rate and subsequently suitable groupings. The results of OLS panel data and 2SLS regression consistently return insignificant deterrent effect of death penalty on homicide rates. Further investigations reveal that death penalty is more effective in deterring homicides in countries with poor economic conditions, indicated by lower per capita GDP and higher unemployment rate. Bachelor of Arts 2015-04-28T09:25:51Z 2015-04-28T09:25:51Z 2015 2015 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/62767 en Nanyang Technological University 43 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic DRNTU::Humanities
DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic theory
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities
DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic theory
Du, Shangzhu
Sheng, Chao
Wen, Shaoyi
Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
description Death penalty has been practiced by most societies in the past but a growing number of countries have abolished this sanction. Among all debates about whether to retain or abolish death penalty, the effect of death penalty on deterring homicides is the most controversial arguing point. This paper aims at examining the significance of deterrent effects of death penalty, taking into consideration country-specific economic climates, in order to provide policy makers with meaningful insights so as to make better-informed decisions. In this paper, we employ detailed information of death penalty and its executions in 50 U.S. states and 49 other countries in years 1995-2012 to conduct OLS and 2SLS regression analysis. Besides, we also explore whether the strength of the deterrent effect varies with economic factors, through adding in interaction of death penalty with GDP per capita and unemployment rate and subsequently suitable groupings. The results of OLS panel data and 2SLS regression consistently return insignificant deterrent effect of death penalty on homicide rates. Further investigations reveal that death penalty is more effective in deterring homicides in countries with poor economic conditions, indicated by lower per capita GDP and higher unemployment rate.
author2 Feng Qu
author_facet Feng Qu
Du, Shangzhu
Sheng, Chao
Wen, Shaoyi
format Final Year Project
author Du, Shangzhu
Sheng, Chao
Wen, Shaoyi
author_sort Du, Shangzhu
title Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
title_short Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
title_full Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
title_fullStr Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
title_full_unstemmed Does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
title_sort does death penalty have a deterrent effect on homicides?
publishDate 2015
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/62767
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