  Furthermore, it is not obvious that the “rock-bottom” explanation – the one that satisfies the precepts of methodological individualism – is going to add anything very interesting to the “half-way” explanation provided by the statistical analysis. In many cases it will even be derived from it. Suppose that we discovered, through statistical analysis, that the crime rate varied as a function of the severity of punishment multiplied by the probability of apprehension. We would then infer from this that criminals were rational utility-maximizers. On the other hand, if studies showed that crime rates were completely unaffected by changes in the severity of punishments or the probability of apprehension, we would infer that something else must be going on at the action-theoretic level.