Stephen Raphael, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer,
"Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime"
, in The Journal of Law and Economics, 2001, reprinted in: Ehrlich, Isaac and Zhiqiang Liu (eds.) The Economics of Crime, Edward Elgar (Cheltenham), 2005.
Original Titel:
Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
In this paper, we pursue several strategies to identify the effect of unemployment rates on crime
rates. Using a state-level panel for the period from 1971 to 1997, we estimate the effect of
unemployment on the rates of seven felony offenses. We control extensively for state-level
demographic and economic factors and estimate specifications that allow for state-specific time
trends as well as state and year fixed effects. In addition, we use prime defense contracts per-capita
and a state-specific measure of exposure to oil shock as instruments for state unemployment rates.
We find sizable and significant effects of unemployment on property crime rates that are stable
across model specifications and estimation methodology. Our most conservative estimates suggest
that nearly 40 percent of the decline in property crime rates during the 1990s is attributable to the
concurrent decline in the unemployment rate. The evidence for violent crime is considerably weaker.
However, a closer analysis of the violent crime of rape yields some evidence that the employment
prospects of males are weakly related to state rape rates.
Sprache der Kurzfassung:
Englisch
Journal:
The Journal of Law and Economics
Erscheinungsjahr:
2001
Notiz zum Zitat:
reprinted in: Ehrlich, Isaac and Zhiqiang Liu (eds.) The Economics of Crime, Edward Elgar (Cheltenham), 2005.