The effect of reporting errors on the cross-country relationship between inequality and crime |
| |
| Institution: | 1. Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 259772, Singapore;2. The Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 259770, Singapore;3. School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, 100872, China;1. School of Economics, CISE and WISE, Xiamen University, 422 Siming South Road, Xiamen, Fujian 361005, PR. China;2. University of Maryland and NBER, Tydings Hall, 3114 Preinkert Dr, College Park, MD 20742, United States;3. Xiamen University and Xiamen University Malaysia, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, 43900 Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia |
| |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes reporting errors in crime data to see how they impact econometric estimates, particularly of the key relationship between inequality and crime. Criminal victimization surveys of 140,000 respondents in 37 industrial, transition and developing countries are used. Comparing the crimes experienced by these respondents with those reported to the police, non-random and mean-reverting errors are apparent. Time-varying factors affect the propensity of victims to report crimes to the police, undermining the use of country-specific fixed effects as a means of dealing with measurement error in official crime data. These errors substantially attenuate both cross-sectional and panel estimates of the partial correlation between inequality and crime. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
