People respond to incentives

1. Pornography and rape are substitutes - Greg Mankiw's Blog, reporting on research by Todd D. Kendall, an economist at Clemson University. UPDATE: Slate has more.

2. Do violent movies cause violent crime? - Marginal Revolution, reporting on research by economists Gordon Dahl (UC San Diego) and Stefano DellaVigna (UC Berkeley).

More illustration, I think, that "clever and relatively open-minded empiricists rule the roost" now in economics.