How do criminals choose the weapons they carry, the number of accomplices, the types of business they target? Economists have long argued that decisions to commit economic crimes are strategic, based on a calculation of risk and reward. 

The Italian justice system changes the punishment for a crime depending on how it is committed, and so a new analysis of thieves and their crimes, based on data from Milan, tests whether this is really the case.

Giovanni Mastrobuoni of the University of Turin, Collegio Carlo Alberto and CEPR is one of the authors of this research. He talks to Tim Phillips about the economics of crime, the problems of collecting data about illegal acts, and Turin’s most famous gold heist.