The New York Times ran an article on research into the economics of vengeance. It’s fairly interesting, but to quote the article, “Most of (the) findings confirm what researchers in different disciplines have already found”.
The meat:
people who have been victims of the same kind of crime … tend to be more vengeful, but not if they have been victims of a different crime…
Vengeful feelings are stronger in countries with low levels of income and education, a weak rule of law and those who recently experienced a war or are ethnically or linguistically fragmented.
…most surprising was that women turned out to be more vengeful than men. If a woman had been a victim of (a crime), she was 10 percent more likely to (seek a stricter punishment); for men the figure was 5 percent.