IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1782.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Crime Rate and the Condition of the Labor Market: A Vector Autoregressive Model

Author

Listed:
  • Tadashi Yamada

Abstract

Few empirical studies of the economics of crime have doubted the deterrent effects of the legal sanctions on crime. Those studies, however, have not established a definitive understanding of the effects of labor market conditions on crime. In this paper, we examine the impact of labor market conditions, represented by either male civilian unemployment or labor force participation rates, on seven major categories of crime, using the quarterly crime-rate data for the United States. Based on an analysis of the reported crime rates for murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft during the period from the first quarter of 1970 through the fourth quarter of 1983, we reject the null hypothesis that labor market conditions have no effects on the crime rate. Rather, we find that the male civilian unemployment rates, especially the rate for those twenty-five years old and over, are strongly and positively associated with most of the crime rates studied. The male civilian labor force participation rates are also found to be related to the crime rates considered here. Youth labor force participation rates for both whites and non-whites, sixteen to nineteen years old, are more strongly associated with the examined crime rates than are the labor force participation rates for males, twenty years old and over.

Suggested Citation

  • Tadashi Yamada, 1985. "The Crime Rate and the Condition of the Labor Market: A Vector Autoregressive Model," NBER Working Papers 1782, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1782
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1782.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard B. Freeman, 1982. "Crime and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 1031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Hoenack, Stephen A & Weiler, William C, 1980. "A Structural Model of Murder Behavior and the Criminal Justice System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 327-341, June.
    4. Hoch, Irving, 1974. "Factors in urban crime," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 184-229, April.
    5. Samuel L. Myers, 1983. "Estimating the Economic Model of Crime: Employment Versus Punishment Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 98(1), pages 157-166.
    6. Granger, C W J, 1969. "Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 424-438, July.
    7. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1975. "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 397-417, June.
    8. Robert B. Litterman, 1979. "Techniques of forecasting using vector autoregressions," Working Papers 115, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    9. Belton M. Fleisher, 1963. "The Effect of Unemployment on Juvenile Delinquency," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71, pages 543-543.
    10. Sims, Christopher A, 1980. "Macroeconomics and Reality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-48, January.
    11. Ann Dryden Witte, 1980. "Estimating the Economic Model of Crime With Individual Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 94(1), pages 57-84.
    12. Robert J. Gordon & Stephen R. King, 1982. "The Output Cost of Disinflation in Traditional and Vector Autoregressive Models," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 13(1), pages 205-244.
    13. Corman, Hope & Joyce, Theodore & Lovitch, Norman, 1987. "Crime, Deterrence and the Business Cycle in New York City: A VAR Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(4), pages 695-700, November.
    14. Sjoquist, David Lawrence, 1973. "Property Crime and Economic Behavior: Some Empirical Results," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 439-446, June.
    15. Weicher, John C, 1970. "The Effect of Income on Delinquency: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 249-256, March.
    16. McPheters, Lee R & Mann, Robert & Schlagenhauf, Don, 1984. "Economic Response to a Crime Deterrence Program: Mandatory Sentencing for Robbery with a Firearm," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(4), pages 550-570, October.
    17. Thomas F. Pogue, 1975. "Effect of Police Expenditures on Crime Rates: Some Evidence," Public Finance Review, , vol. 3(1), pages 14-44, January.
    18. Block, M K & Heineke, J M, 1975. "A Labor Theoretic Analysis of the Criminal Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 314-325, June.
    19. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1973. "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 521-565, May-June.
    20. Phillips, Llad & Votey, Harold L, Jr & Maxwell, Darold, 1972. "Crime, Youth, and the Labor Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(3), pages 491-504, May-June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Víctor Hugo Torres Preciado, 2017. "Desempleo y criminalidad en los estados de la frontera norte de México: un enfoque espacial bayesiano de vectores auto-regresivos. (Unemployment and crime in the Northern-border states of Mexico: a sp," Ensayos Revista de Economia, Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Economia, vol. 0(1), pages 25-58, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hope Corman & H. Naci Mocan, 1996. "A Time-Series Analysis of Crime and Drug Use in New York City," NBER Working Papers 5463, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Paolo Buonanno, 2003. "The Socioeconomic Determinants of Crime. A Review of the Literature," Working Papers 63, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2003.
    3. Patricia Funk & Peter Kugler, 2003. "Identifying Efficient Crime‐Combating Policies by VAR Models: The Example of Switzerland," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 21(4), pages 525-538, October.
    4. Paul J. Zak, 2000. "Larceny," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 157-179, July.
    5. Isaac Ehrlich, 1996. "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 43-67, Winter.
    6. David L. Sollars & Bruce L. Benson & David W. Rasmussen, 1994. "Drug Enforcement and the Deterrence of Property Crime Among Local Jurisdictions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(1), pages 22-45, January.
    7. H. Naci Mocan & Hope Corman, 2000. "A Time-Series Analysis of Crime, Deterrence, and Drug Abuse in New York City," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 584-604, June.
    8. Denis Fougère & Francis Kramarz & Julien Pouget, 2009. "Youth Unemployment and Crime in France," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(5), pages 909-938, September.
    9. H. Naci Mocan & Stephen C. Billups & Jody Overland, 2005. "A Dynamic Model of Differential Human Capital and Criminal Activity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 72(288), pages 655-681, November.
    10. William Harbaugh & Naci Mocan & Michael Visser, 2013. "Theft and Deterrence," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 389-407, December.
    11. H. Naci Mocan & Daniel I. Rees, 2005. "Economic Conditions, Deterrence and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from Micro Data," American Law and Economics Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 319-349.
    12. Michael Massourakis & Farahmand Rezvani & Tadashi Yamada, 1984. "Occupation, Race, Unemployment and Crime In a Dynamic System," NBER Working Papers 1256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Horst Entorf & Hannes Spengler, 2008. "Is Being 'Soft on Crime' the Solution to Rising Crime Rates?: Evidence from Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 837, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Kwabena Brempong, 1986. "Empirical models of criminal behavior: How significant a factor is race?," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 27-43, June.
    15. Christine Siew-Pyng Chong & Suresh Narayanan, 2017. "The Size and Costs of Bribes in Malaysia: An Analysis Based on Convicted Bribe Givers," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 16(1), pages 66-84, Winter/Sp.
    16. Bedard, Kelly & Helland, Eric, 2004. "The location of women's prisons and the deterrence effect of "harder" time," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 147-167, June.
    17. W. David Allen, 2002. "Crime, Punishment, and Recidivism," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(1), pages 39-60, February.
    18. W. David Allen, 2005. "Cultures of Illegality in the National Hockey League," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(3), pages 494-513, January.
    19. Trung Nguyen, 2021. "The Effectiveness of White‐Collar Crime Enforcement: Evidence from the War on Terror," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 5-58, March.
    20. Awais Anwar & Noman Arshed & Sofia Anwar, 2017. "Socio-economic Determinants of Crime: An Empirical Study of Pakistan," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(1), pages 312-322.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1782. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.