IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/str/wpaper/1209.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Personal Indebtedness, Spatial Effects and Crime

Author

Listed:
  • Stuart McIntyre

    (Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde)

  • Donald Lacombe

    (Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University,)

Abstract

There is a long and detailed history of attempts to understand what causes crime. One of the most prominent strands of this literature has sought to better understand the relationship between economic conditions and crime. Following Becker (1968), the economic argument is that in an attempt to maintain consumption in the face of unemployment, people may resort to sources of illicit income. In a similar manner, we might expect ex-ante, that increases in the level of personal indebtedness would be likely to provide similar incentives to engage in criminality. In this paper we seek to understand the spatial pattern of property and theft crimes using a range of socioeconomic variables, including data on the level of personal indebtedness.

Suggested Citation

  • Stuart McIntyre & Donald Lacombe, 2012. "Personal Indebtedness, Spatial Effects and Crime," Working Papers 1209, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:str:wpaper:1209
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.strath.ac.uk/media/1newwebsite/departmentsubject/economics/research/researchdiscussionpapers/2012/12-09-Final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Maria Cracolici & Teodora Uberti, 2009. "Geographical distribution of crime in Italian provinces: a spatial econometric analysis," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 29(1), pages 1-28, February.
    3. Paolo Buonanno & Giacomo Pasini & Paolo Vanin, 2012. "Crime and social sanction," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 91(1), pages 193-218, March.
    4. Pyle, David & Deadman, Derek, 1994. "Crime and Unemployment in Scotland: Some Further Results," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 41(3), pages 314-324, August.
    5. Morgan Kelly, 2000. "Inequality And Crime," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 530-539, November.
    6. Cherry, Todd L. & List, John A., 2002. "Aggregation bias in the economic model of crime," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 81-86, March.
    7. Isaac Ehrlich, 1975. "On the Relation between Education and Crime," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Income, and Human Behavior, pages 313-338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lawrence Cohen & Marcus Felson, 1979. "On estimating the social costs of national economic policy: A critical examination of the Brenner study," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 251-259, April.
    9. Carmichael, Fiona & Ward, Robert, 2001. "Male unemployment and crime in England and Wales," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 111-115, October.
    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. Stuart G McIntyre, 2017. "Personal indebtedness, community characteristics and theft crimes," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(10), pages 2395-2419, August.
    2. Luca Zanin & Rosalba Radice & Giampiero Marra, 2013. "Estimating the Effect of Perceived Risk of Crime on Social Trust in the Presence of Endogeneity Bias," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 523-547, November.
    3. Lastauskas, Povilas & Tatsi, Eirini, 2017. "Spatial Nexus in Crime and Unemployment in Times of Crisis," Working Paper Series 2/2017, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    4. Entorf, Horst, 2013. "Criminal Victims, Victimized Criminals, or Both? A Deeper Look at the Victim-Offender Overlap," IZA Discussion Papers 7686, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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. McIntyre, Stuart G. & Lacombe, Donald J., 2012. "Personal indebtedness, spatial effects and crime," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 455-459.
    2. Nouman Khaliq & Muhammad Shabbir & Zahira Batool, 2019. "Exploring the Influence of Unemployment on Criminal Behavior in Punjab, Pakistan," Global Regional Review, Humanity Only, vol. 4(1), pages 402-409, March.
    3. Lucia dalla Pellegrina & Giorgio Di Maio & Donato Masciandaro & Margherita Saraceno, 2020. "Organized crime, suspicious transaction reporting and anti-money laundering regulation," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(12), pages 1761-1775, December.
    4. Stuart G McIntyre, 2017. "Personal indebtedness, community characteristics and theft crimes," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(10), pages 2395-2419, August.
    5. Montolio, Daniel, 2018. "The effects of local infrastructure investment on crime," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 210-230.
    6. Marcel Fafchamps & Christine Moser, 2003. "Crime, Isolation and Law Enforcement," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 12(4), pages 625-671, December.
    7. Tatsushi Oka, 2009. "Juvenile crime and punishment: evidence from Japan," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(24), pages 3103-3115.
    8. Deller, Steven C. & Deller, Melissa, 2005. "Shifting Patterns in Wisconsin Crime Rates," Staff Papers 12627, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    9. Saleemi, Muhammad Waqar & Amir-ud-Din, Rafi, 2019. "How does quality of governance influence occurrence of crime? A longitudinal analysis of Asian countries," MPRA Paper 94142, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Klebson Moura & Raul Silveira Neto, 2016. "Individual and contextual determinants of victimisation in Brazilian urban centres: A multilevel approach," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(8), pages 1559-1573, June.
    11. Paolo Buonanno, 2006. "Crime, Education and Peer Pressure," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 96(5), pages 89-110, September.
    12. 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.
    13. Amedeo Argentiero & Bruno Chiarini & Elisabetta Marzano, 2020. "Does Tax Evasion Affect Economic Crime?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(2), pages 441-482, June.
    14. Lu Han & Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Samrat Bhattacharya, 2013. "Determinants of violent and property crimes in England and Wales: a panel data analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(34), pages 4820-4830, December.
    15. Zuzana Janko & Gurleen Popli, 2015. "Examining the link between crime and unemployment: a time-series analysis for Canada," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(37), pages 4007-4019, August.
    16. Piraee Khosrow & Barzegar Maryam, 2011. "The Relationship between the Misery Index and Crimes: Evidence from Iran," Asian Journal of Law and Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-21, April.
    17. GholamReza Keshavarz Haddad & Hamed Markazi Moghadam, 2011. "The socioeconomic and demographic determinants of crime in Iran (a regional panel study)," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 99-114, August.
    18. Paolo Buonanno, 2003. "Identifying the Effect of Education on Crime. Evidence from the Italian Regions," Working Papers 65, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2003.
    19. Majid Maddah, 2013. "An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between Unemployment and Theft Crimes," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 3(1), pages 50-53.
    20. Elvira Sapienza, 2013. "Usura ed estorsione nel mezzogiorno: una stima delle determinanti," STUDI ECONOMICI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2013(109), pages 45-67.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Spatial Econometrics; Crime; Personal Debt; Economic Conditions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R1 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:str:wpaper:1209. 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: Kirsty Hall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edstruk.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.