Identifying the socio-economic and demographic determinants of crime across Spanish provinces

This paper studies the socio-economic and demographic determinants of crime in Spain. We estimate a crime equation using a panel dataset of Spanish provinces from 1993 to 1999 and applying the GMM-system estimator. Results indicate that lagged crime rate, clearance rate, urbanisation rate and fraction of foreigners are positively correlated to crime rates. Property crimes are better explained by socio-economic variables (youth unemployment rate and education). Results are obtained using instrumental variables that use the dynamic properties of our dataset to control for both measurement errors in crime data and the likely joint endogeneity of the explanatory variables.

[1]  Horst Entorf,et al.  Socio-Economic and Demographic Factors of Crime in Germany: Evidence from Panel Data of the German States , 1998 .

[2]  I. Ehrlich.  Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation , 1973, Journal of Political Economy.

[3]  R. Sah.  Social Osmosis and Patterns of Crime , 1991, Journal of Political Economy.

[4]  R. Sah,et al.  Social Osmosis and Patterns of Crime: A Dynamic Economic Analysis , 1988 .

[5]  M. Vannini,et al.  Estimating a crime equation in the presence of organized crime: Evidence from Italy , 1997 .

[6]  Richard B. Freeman.  Crime and the Employment of Disadvantaged Youths , 1991 .

[7]  E. Glaeser,et al.  Crime and Social Interactions , 1995 .

[8]  Kenneth I. Wolpin,et al.  An Economic Analysis of Crime and Punishment in England and Wales, 1894-1967 , 1978, Journal of Political Economy.

[9]  Bruce Sacerdote,et al.  Why is There More Crime in Cities? , 1996, Journal of Political Economy.

[10]  R. Freeman,et al.  The economics of crime , 1999 .

[11]  P. Buonanno,et al.  Crime and Labour Market Opportunities in Italy (1993-2002) , 2006 .

[12]  Jeffrey T. Grogger,et al.  Market Wages and Youth Crime , 1997, Journal of Labor Economics.

[13]  Richard B. Freeman,et al.  Why Do so Many Young American Men Commit Crimes and What Might We Do About it? , 1996 .

[14]  M. Arellano,et al.  Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models , 1995 .

[15]  Richard B. Freeman,et al.  Chapter 52 The economics of crime , 1999 .

[16]  Todd L. Cherry,et al.  Aggregation bias in the economic model of crime , 2002 .

[17]  D. Usher.  Education as a Deterrent to Crime , 1997 .

[18]  Lawrence F. Katz,et al.  The Company You Keep: The Effects of Family and Neighborhood on Disadvantaged Youths , 1991 .

[19]  Horst Entorf,et al.  Socioeconomic and demographic factors of crime in Germany , 2000 .

[20]  Jeffrey T. Grogger.  The Effect of Arrests on the Employment and Earnings of Young Men , 1995 .

[21]  Enrico Moretti,et al.  The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports , 2001 .

[22]  Alejandro Gaviria,et al.  Increasing Returns and the Evolution of Violent Crime: The Case of Colombia , 1998 .

[23]  Pablo Fajnzylber,et al.  Inequality and Violent Crime* , 2002, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[24]  M. Arellano,et al.  Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations , 1991 .

[25]  S. Machin,et al.  Crime and Economic Incentives , 2000, The Journal of Human Resources.

[26]  Ted Chiricos,et al.  Rates of Crime and Unemployment: An Analysis of Aggregate Research Evidence , 1987 .

[27]  R. Blundell,et al.  Initial Conditions and Moment Restrictions in Dynamic Panel Data Models , 1998 .