Crimterdisciplinarity

Criminology and economics can learn a lot from each other. That is easily said, but usually difficult to implement. All too often, such interdisciplinary exchanges remain fruitless, because the different sides do not speak each other's languages or because one disobeys the dogmas of the other. The target article by Nguyen et al. (2025) is well suited to illustrate these two common issues. With the distinction between stated and revealed preferences, Nguyen et al. borrow two of the most fundamental concepts from economics. However, they apply them in ways that will occur "unorthodox" to economists. I highlight some of these unorthodoxies to illustrate how, at least in my view, criminologists could benefit from trying to immerse themselves (even) more deeply in the decision-theoretical framework on which neoclassical economics is built. Using Nguyen et al.'s setting as an example, I try to sketch out the extra layers of conceptual clarification that such an exercise could entail in Part I of this comment. In Part II, I discuss how economics could learn from criminology in turn. Possibly without noticing, Nguyen et al. use an approach that departs from the traditions of neoclassical microeconomics in several respects, which I spell out in more detail below. All these deviations are very reasonable and have the potential to improve our understanding of human decision-making processes and resulting behaviors, which is what we all are after as social scientists. Nonetheless, economics has an unfortunate tradition of being slow in importing innovations from the outside.