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Working Paper
Fewer Vacants, Fewer Crimes? Impacts of Neighborhood Revitalization Policies on Crime
The relationship between neighborhood physical environment and social disorder, particularly crime, is of critical interest to urban economists and sociologists, as well as local governments. Over the past 50 years, various policy interventions to improve physical conditions in distressed neighborhoods have also been heralded for their potential to reduce crime. Urban renewal programs in the mid-20th century and public housing redevelopment in the 1990s both subscribed to the idea that signs of physical disorder invite social disorder. More recently, the federal Neighborhood Stabilization ...
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 effects of school quality on juvenile crime
This essay-the 2001 winner of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's undergraduate essay competition, Essays in Economics-investigates whether students who attend higher-quality schools commit fewer crimes. If so, improving school quality might be worth considering as an approach to reducing juvenile crime. The author finds some evidence that higher-quality schools are associated with lower probabilities of committing some types of crime.
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, ...
Journal Article
The economics of bank security
Journal Article
The changing relationship between income and crime victimization
This paper was presented at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being" as part of session 3, " Education and crime in urban neighborhoods." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. The author examines the changes in the relationship between income and crime victimization over time. He argues that the poor suffer disproportionately more from property crime today than they did twenty years ago, possibly because of the increased reliance on theft-prevention devices by higher income groups. The ...
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.