Search Results
Working Paper
'Captive markets': the impact of kidnappings on corporate investment in Colombia
This paper measures the impact of crime on firm investment by exploiting variation in kidnappings in Colombia from 1996 to 2002. Our central result is that firms invest less when kidnappings directly target firms. We also find that broader forms of crime--homicides, guerrilla attacks, and general kidnappings--have no significant effect on investment. This finding alleviates concerns that our main result may be driven by unobserved variables that explain both overall criminal activity and investment. Furthermore, kidnappings that target firms reduce not only the investment of firms that sell ...
Journal Article
The mystery of crime
Will the recession cause a surge in crime? Economic theory suggests it might, but empirical evidence for the widely held notion is far from conclusive.
Working Paper
Crime and the labor market: a search model with optimal contracts
This paper extends the Pissarides (2000) model of the labor market to include crime and punishment `a la Becker (1968). All workers, irrespective of their labor force status can commit crimes and the employment contract is determined optimally. The model is used to study, analytically and quantitatively, the effects of various labor market and crime policies. For instance, a more generous unemployment insurance system reduces the crime rate of the unemployed but its effect on the crime rate of the employed depends on job duration and jail sentences. When the model is calibrated to U.S. data, ...
Working Paper
On the political economy of income redistribution and crime
A general equilibrium analysis of the effects of income redistribution and crime, showing that while expenditures on police protection reduce crime, it is possible for the crime rate to increase with redistribution.
Journal Article
The economics of bank security
Journal Article
It takes a village: communities tackle crime
To achieve safety improvements that are sustainable, residents, developers, and police must work together to mobilize neighbors and transform places.
Journal Article
Some pleasant economic side effects
Journal Article
Paying for crime and punishment
Criminals aren't the only ones who pay for their crimes - so does everyone else, in the form of taxes to build and operate prisons and put police on the streets. With a slow economy contributing to a rise in crime, the associated costs may also be on the rise.
Journal Article
The economics of crime
Gary S. Becker, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science and Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, spoke to business and community leaders as guest lecturer in the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Economic Lecture Series. This article is excerpted from The Economics of Crime: Prevention, Enforcement, and Punishment, which outlined his premise that people decide whether to commit a crime by a comparison of the benefits and costs.