The Economics of Crime Deterrence: A Survey of Theory and Evidence

Cameron, Samuel

doi:10.1111/j.1467-6435.1988.tb02311.x

Cited by 294 publications

(134 citation statements)

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“…3 Those "initial" studies in the mid-1980s revealed that high unemployment was associated with a rise in crime, although the relationship between crime and unemployment was less statistically significant than, for instance, that between deterrence variables and crime. In addition, the empirical evidence was far from conclusive, and the relationship between crime and unemployment ambiguous (in both its nature and robustness), hence leaving the topic open for further research (see, for example, Cameron, 1988, andFreeman, 1996, for surveys of those initial studies).…”

Section: A Glance At the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Unintended Consequences on Crime of "Pennies from Heaven"

Montolio¹

2016

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work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-IGO BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose, as provided below. No derivative work is allowed.Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license.Following a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. This paper examines how an infrastructure investment policy, implemented nationwide at the local level, has affected local crime rates. This policy, developed in the wake of the global recession of 2008-09, was designed to boost local economies through job creation. Using monthly figures from the Spanish region of Catalonia's more than 900 municipalities, the paper exploits geographic and time variation in the Spanish Ministry of Public Administration's random approvals of local investment policies, to estimate their impact on both (un)employment and crime. The combination of difference-in-differences and IV estimates makes it possible to precisely assess both the size and timing of the policy's impact on the local labor market and on municipal-level crime rates. While the policy apparently did not tackle the economic recession over the long run, local public finances did experience a boost over the short term, resulting in a temporary reduction in local unemployment rates (as legally required by the policy), as well as a significant drop in crime rates.JEL classifications: K42, R53, H54, J40

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Section: A Glance At the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Unintended Consequences on Crime of "Pennies from Heaven"

Montolio¹

2016

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“…This can explain why, in the empirical literature, different measures of deterrence are not statistically significant or, quite frequently, even positively related to crime (e.g., Benson et al, 1994a,b;Cameron, 1988;Devine et al, 1988;Cloninger and Sartorius, 1979;Corman et al, 1987). To mitigate the problem of reverse causality, we consider the one-year lagged spending in security.…”

Section: Controlling For This Variable Is Directly Suggested By the Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life is Now! Time Preferences and Crime: Aggregate Evidence from the Italian Regions

2013

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“…One literature review in the late 1980s noted that the majority of empirical studies found either no relationship or even a positive relationship between police and crime. 49 While it is possible that there is no causal relationship between policing and crime, even the credulous might have a hard time imagining how police add measurably to the kind of crime generally studied. 50 It is much easier to imagine that these studies suffer from omitted variable bias, with police having been added as crime rose.…”

Section: Exemplar Of the "Credibility Revolution": The Law And Econmentioning

confidence: 99%