Rational Thieves: Evidence from Los Angeles

The LA Times reports that a group of teenagers targeted Hollywood to rob tourists because they believed that the police were concentrating their attention on the Crenshaw District because of lingering effects of the Zimmerman Trial.

"What we're thinking is these youngsters took advantage of our redeployment of officers down to the Crenshaw District last night and decided that this would be a good night to come up to Hollywood and act a little crazy," Smith said."

For those of you who do not read the American Economic Review, Di Tella and Schargrodsky  exploit the same experimental design to measure whether cops do reduce local crime.  

Strategic thinking is a valuable skill.  I hope that our universities are doing a good job teaching the intuition behind intro game theory?