Compulsory schooling laws and school crime

Extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment, well-being, civic involvement, and labour market outcomes. However, at-risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety. The purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age (MDA) requirement above 16 increases crime committed within US public high schools. A difference-in-difference estimation exploits changes in state-level MDA laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not, while no effect on overall crime is identified when the MDA requirement is raised to 17. Furthermore, these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas. Coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the MDA requirement is raised to 18, only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is displaced to schools. Analysis by category of crime reveals schools incur more physical attacks, no change in illegal drug and property crimes, and fewer violent crimes in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18, while illegal drug crimes increase in states that raise their MDA requirement to 17.     

Special issue on forecasting,use of survey data on expectations,and panel data applications: editors’ introduction

This study reinvestigates the relationship between unemployment and crime, but is the first to focus explicitly on the effects of long-term unemployment on crime. A unique finding is that long-term unemployment shows a strong association with violent crime, an effect which is greater than that of total unemployment on property crime in this and most previous studies. Long-term unemployment thus identifies a marginal group for committing crime (particularly violent crime) better than total unemployment, with the duration of unemployment plausibly increasing the strain that fosters violent behaviour.     

ALCOHOL REGULATION AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TOWARDS CHILDREN

In recent years, economists have paid much attention to the demand for alcohol and the negative externalities associated with excessive drinking. Largely ignored in the literature is the link between alcohol use and domestic violence. Given the established positive relationship between alcohol consumption and acts of violence, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role that changes in the determinants of the demand for alcohol may play in reducing the incidence of violence aimed at children. Data on violence come from the 1976 Physical Violence in American Families survey. We estimate a model in which violent outcomes are affected by the state excise tax rate on beer; illegal drug prices, and other regulatory variables such as availability measures and laws restricting the advertising of alcohol. Results show that increasing the tax on beer can be an effective policy tool in reducing violence. Laws designed to make obtaining beer more difficult also may be effective in reducing violence, while restrictions on advertising and increases in illegal drug prices have no effects.     

Violent crime and female victimization: evidence from metropolitan regions in South Korea

In the economics of crime literature, victimization by crime has received less attention than the supply side of crime. This article investigates the relationship between violent crime and female victimization. We show that violent crime increases with both the overall female exposure and female proportion in the victim-target group. Potential interactions between these female characteristics and income inequality are also shown to influence the incidence of violent crime. Empirically, we introduce proxies for female characteristics that better reflect our hypotheses – for example, young unmarried female-headed households (for exposure to crime) and new job gains among females (for economic status). Using a panel of South Korean metropolitan regions, 2000–2011, we find that a certain limited change in these female characteristics could account for as much as 16% of violent crime.     

Crime rates,male youth unemployment and real income in Australia: evidence from Granger causality tests

This article applies Granger causality tests to examine the relationship between seven different categories of property crime and violent crime against the person, male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings in Australia from 1964 to 2001 within a cointegration and vector error correction framework. It is found that fraud, homicide and motor vehicle theft are cointegrated with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings. However, there is no evidence of a long-run relationship between either break and enter, robbery, serious assault or stealing with male youth unemployment and real male average weekly earnings.     

ADOLESCENT VIDEO GAME PLAYING AND FIGHTING OVER THE LONG‐TERM

I present new evidence of the link between video game play and fighting. The General Learning Model predicts that increased aggression from playing violent video games. These predictions are tested using a large longitudinal data set tracking adolescents over time. Consistent with previous research, there is a positive raw correlation between video game playing as an adolescent and aggressive outcomes, in this case fights, even more than a decade later. However, multivariate and instrumental variables estimators do not find a causal relationship. Some implications are: support policy for further interventions is undermined, future research should be more careful about identification threats, and similar methodological approaches can be applied to the effects of other new communication technologies. (JEL D18, L86, O35)     

Violent crime and punishment: an application of the LISREL model

Public anxiety over violent crime has forged a broad consensus to purchase more crime control. Recently, the President brought into law a federal anti-crime bill that will put an additional 100 000 police on the nation's streets. This paper presents empirical evidence on the deterrence effect of police presence. The principal finding is that police presence deters commission of violent crimes by increasing the risk of being punished for committing those crimes. This risk is modelled as a latent variable, because the probability and severity of punishment for committing a violent crime are generally communicated in an onconsistant fashion. The violent crime commission rate is also treated as a latent variable, because it is almost certainly afflicted with measurement error.     

Crime during the business cycle: urban–rural differences

Despite the abundant literature on how crime evolves over the business cycle, no consensus has arisen whether crime increases or decreases during recessions. The literature provides both positive and negative associations between the crime rate and the unemployment rate, a commonly used proxy for the business cycle. This study revisits this issue and uses county-level data from 1990 to 2013. It allows for differences as to how unemployment relates to both property crime and violent crime depending on the size of the counties. We find evidence of a positive association between unemployment and property crime that strengthens with county size. The results show the same pattern for violent crime but are statistically weaker. Our findings suggest that the positive association between property crime and unemployment that others have found is largely driven by more populous areas.     

金融发展与西部民族地区经济增长的实证研究——以宁夏为例

运用单位根检验、协整检验和格兰杰检验实证分析了宁夏金融发展与经济增长之间的关系。研究表明,宁夏经济增长与金融发展存在长期稳定的、互为因果的辩证统一关系。针对金融发展促进经济增长过程中出现的问题,提出了相应的政策建议。     

Illegal drugs and public corruption: Crack based evidence from California

Do illegal drugs foster public corruption? To estimate the causal effect of drugs on public corruption, we adopt the synthetic control method and exploit the fact that crack cocaine markets emerged in California in 1981, before reaching any other U.S. state. Our results show that public corruption more than tripled in California in the first three years following the arrival of crack cocaine. We argue that this resulted from the particular characteristics of illegal drugs: cheap technology and rigid demand, which fosters a convergence of interests between criminals and corrupted public officials resulting in a positive causal impact of illegal drugs on corruption.     

Central city crime and suburban economic growth

This paper explores the relationship between inner-city crime patterns and suburban income growth, analysing data on 318 US counties for selected metropolitan statistical areas of 32 states within the United States from 1982 to 1997. The findings suggest that violent crime does seem to have a negative impact on close-in suburbs, with a less negative impact farther away from the central city (becoming positive at some point). While results are not as robust as we had hoped they are consistent with flight to further-out suburbs rather than migration to different metropolitan areas in response to urban crime.     

区域人口与经济发展互动关系定量分析--以青岛市为例

区域人口与经济发展之间具有密切的互动关系。采用格兰杰检验法判定二者之间的因果关系,采用多元回归分析法提取二者之间的数量关系。根据1978～2010年统计数据和历次人口普查数据,对青岛市人口与经济发展之间的定量关系进行了实证研究。     

The Unexpected Effects of Criminal Violence along the Mexico-Texas Border

The violence and insecurity that Mexico suffered during former President Calderon’s war on the Mexican drug cartels have come at a grave economic cost to many cities. The criminal violence had an impact on interdependent borderlands, which are geographic areas that have a symbiotic link between cities and communities of adjoining territories. Mexican business people and consumers that live in cities along the shared border with the United States have the ability to shift their economic transactions away from their insecure environments and to US border communities. In addition, US residents that would normally travel south for economic transactions would decide to avoid violent areas and therefore conduct business on the northern side. This research demonstrates that increased violence in Mexico produced a positive economic effect on the US side of the Mexico–Texas interdependent borderlands. Specifically, our time series analysis (2002–2014) shows that increased homicides, kidnappings and extortions in adjacent Mexican cities are strongly associated with higher gross total sales in the Texas communities while controlling for economic and demographic factors. We also found that the increases in the three crime categories were not associated with the arts, entertainment and recreation sector, nor the accommodation and food services sector performance. However, there was a positive relationship with the retail sales sector.     

不确定性容忍度、决策逻辑与突破式创新关系研究

以位于武汉市产业园、孵化器、创业园等多家公司的255位产品开发及技术研发人员、市场开发人员为有效样本,采用层级回归方法探讨不确定性容忍度、决策逻辑与突破式创新的关系。结果表明:不确定性容忍度与突破式创新显著正相关;不确定性容忍度与因果逻辑显著负相关,与效果逻辑显著正相关;突破式创新与因果逻辑显著负相关,与效果逻辑显著正相关;因果/效果决策在不确定性容忍度与突破式创新关系中发挥部分中介作用;不确定性容忍度正向调节效果逻辑与突破式创新的关系,对因果逻辑与突破式创新的关系没有显著调节作用。研究结论对企业创新管理实践具有重要指导价值。     

Examining the link between crime and unemployment: a time-series analysis for Canada

We use national and regional Canadian data to analyse the relationship between economic activity (as reflected by the unemployment rate) and crime rates. Given potential aggregation bias, we disaggregate the crime data and look at the relationship between six different types of crimes rates and unemployment rate; we also disaggregate the data by region. We employ an error correction model in our analysis to test for short-run and long-run dynamics. We find no evidence of long-run relationship between crime and unemployment, when we look at both disaggregation by type of crime and disaggregation by region. Lack of evidence of a long-run relationship indicates we have no evidence of the motivation hypothesis. For selected types of property crimes, we find some evidence of a significant negative short-run relationship between crime and unemployment, lending support to the opportunity hypothesis. Inclusion of control variables in the panel analysis does not alter the findings, qualitatively or quantitatively.     

Drugs: Drugs, economics and policy

There is no necessary link between drug consumption, addiction and social disintegration. Empirical evidence suggests that a considerable share of the population has consumed illegal drugs during some period of their lives. A substantial proportion of drug users have a job and home. Many 'mature out' of drug consumption in their thirties. Most drug users are normal consumers responding systematically to relative prices.
After the failure of a repressive drugs policy, Switzerland allows cities to pursue a 'third way' between repression and liberalization. The state allows carefully screened heavy addicts to inject heroin at a nominal price, while at the same time raising the cost to potential entrants. The 'experiment' has produced encouraging results. The health of heroin users has improved and crime has been reduced. A homogenized drugs policy in the European Union would probably disallow such promising programmes.     

改善经济运行环境的时机选择:政府与资本的博弈

通过政府与国内非法、合法资本持有者间的不完美信息动态博弈模型,得出政府对待非法资本的严厉打击,将在一定程度上引起国内整体性的跟随性流出。即政府对待非法资本的态度,将在一定程度上影响我国资本净流出/流入的方向。而国内存在大量资本净流入时,相当于放宽了政府对非法资本的严厉打击的现实约束,为在资本净流量波动尽量小的前提下改善经济运行环境创造了条件。     

Crime deterrence role of Romanian churches

We analyse the crime deterrence role of Romanian churches using a data sample of crime in all 42 Romanian counties from 2001 to 2013. We aim to determine whether the public funding of churches can be justified by the role Romanian churches play in deterring illegal behaviour. The decision to build a new church in a certain location can be endogenous; therefore, we use as an instrument the built-up area of counties’ cities in the 1990s. After controlling for the endogeneity of the number of churches, our estimations show that Romanian churches significantly diminish local crime rates. Adventist, Baptist, Catholic and Orthodox churches tend to play an active role in the deterrence of local crime. Hence, Romanian churches not only provide religious services, but also promote religious norms and strengthen the social ties between parishioners, help prevent crime.     

Economic Backwardness and Social Tension*

We propose that relative economic backwardness contributes to the build‐up of social tension and non‐violent and violent conflict. We test our hypothesis using data on organized mass movements and armed civil conflict. The findings show that greater economic backwardness is consistently linked to a higher probability of onset of violent and especially non‐violent forms of civil unrest. We provide evidence that the relationship is causal in instrumental variables estimations using new instruments, including mailing speeds and telegram charges around 1900. The magnitude of the effect of backwardness on social tension increases in the two‐stage least‐squares estimations.     

Research output and economic growth in G7 countries: new evidence from asymmetric panel causality testing

Recent studies have shown increasing interest on the relationship between research output and economic growth. The study of such a relationship is not only of theoretical interest, but it can also influence specific policies to improve the quality, and probably the quantity of research output. This article has studied this relationship in G7 countries using the asymmetric panel causality test of Hatemi-J (2011). Our results show that only the UK shows a causal relationship from the output of research to real GDP. However, when the signs of variations are taken into account, there is an asymmetric causality running from negative research output shocks to negative real GDP shocks.