IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v57y2019i2p1163-1181.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Losing By Less? Import Competition, Unemployment Insurance Generosity, And Crime

Author

Listed:
  • Brian Beach
  • John Lopresti

Abstract

Increased import competition from China has brought about a host of negative consequences for the most exposed industries and labor markets. Do social programs attenuate these harmful effects? We examine changes in import competition between 1990 and 2007, taking crime as our outcome of interest and unemployment insurance as our mitigating program. We find strong evidence that counties with access to more generous unemployment insurance experienced relatively smaller increases in trade‐induced property crime. This highlights a new and important positive externality of unemployment insurance. (JEL H00, R10)

Suggested Citation

  • Brian Beach & John Lopresti, 2019. "Losing By Less? Import Competition, Unemployment Insurance Generosity, And Crime," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(2), pages 1163-1181, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:57:y:2019:i:2:p:1163-1181
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12758
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12758
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12758?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David H. Autor & David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson, 2016. "The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 205-240, October.
    2. Agrawal, Ashwini K. & Matsa, David A., 2013. "Labor unemployment risk and corporate financing decisions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 449-470.
    3. Marc J. Melitz & Stephen J. Redding, 2015. "New Trade Models, New Welfare Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1105-1146, March.
    4. Leo Feler & Mine Z. Senses, 2017. "Trade Shocks and the Provision of Local Public Goods," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 101-143, November.
    5. Daron Acemoglu & David Autor & David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson & Brendan Price, 2016. "Import Competition and the Great US Employment Sag of the 2000s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(S1), pages 141-198.
    6. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren, 2018. "The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County-Level Estimates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1163-1228.
    7. Paolo Buonanno & Daniel Montolio & Paolo Vanin, 2009. "Does Social Capital Reduce Crime?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(1), pages 145-170, February.
    8. Che, Yi & Xu, Xun & Zhang, Yan, 2018. "Chinese import competition, crime, and government transfers in US," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 544-567.
    9. Petia Topalova, 2007. "Trade Liberalization, Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Indian Districts," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization and Poverty, pages 291-336, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Carl Davidson & Steven J. Matusz, 2006. "Trade Liberalization And Compensation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(3), pages 723-747, August.
    11. David H. Autor & David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson, 2013. "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2121-2168, October.
    12. repec:mpr:mprres:7736 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Peter Z. Schochet & Ronald D'Amico & Jillian Berk & Sarah Dolfin & Nathan Wozny, "undated". "Estimated Impacts for Participants in the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program Under the 2002 Amendments," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 582d8723f6884d4eb7a3f95a4, Mathematica Policy Research.
    14. Shushanik Hakobyan & John McLaren, 2016. "Looking for Local Labor Market Effects of NAFTA," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(4), pages 728-741, October.
    15. Feenstra, Robert C. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1994. "Trade adjustment assistance and Pareto gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3-4), pages 201-222, May.
    16. Costas Arkolakis & Arnaud Costinot & Andres Rodriguez-Clare, 2012. "New Trade Models, Same Old Gains?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 94-130, February.
    17. Rafael Dix-Carneiro & Rodrigo R. Soares & Gabriel Ulyssea, 2018. "Economic Shocks and Crime: Evidence from the Brazilian Trade Liberalization," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 158-195, October.
    18. Arash Nekoei & Andrea Weber, 2017. "Does Extending Unemployment Benefits Improve Job Quality?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 527-561, February.
    19. Lindo, Jason M. & Schaller, Jessamyn & Hansen, Benjamin, 2018. "Caution! Men not at work: Gender-specific labor market conditions and child maltreatment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 77-98.
    20. Kawachi, I. & Kennedy, B.P. & Lochner, K. & Prothrow-Stith, D., 1997. "Social capital, income inequality, and mortality," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(9), pages 1491-1498.
    21. repec:mpr:mprres:7737 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Justin R. Pierce & Peter K. Schott, 2016. "The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1632-1662, July.
    23. Joanne W. Hsu & David A. Matsa & Brian T. Melzer, 2018. "Unemployment Insurance as a Housing Market Stabilizer," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(1), pages 49-81, January.
    24. David Hummels & Rasmus J?rgensen & Jakob Munch & Chong Xiang, 2014. "The Wage Effects of Offshoring: Evidence from Danish Matched Worker-Firm Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1597-1629, June.
    25. McManus, T. Clay & Schaur, Georg, 2016. "The effects of import competition on worker health," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 160-172.
    26. Jooyoun Park, 2012. "Does Occupational Training by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program Really Help Reemployment? Success Measured as Occupation Matching," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 999-1016, November.
    27. Sarah Dolfin & Peter Z. Schochet, 2012. "The Benefits and Costs of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program Under the 2002 Amendments," Mathematica Policy Research Reports af4ef9bb2d3a4fbba1e3a3cf8, Mathematica Policy Research.
    28. Ossa, Ralph, 2015. "Why trade matters after all," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 266-277.
    29. Lorenzo Caliendo & Fernando Parro, 2015. "Estimates of the Trade and Welfare Effects of NAFTA," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(1), pages 1-44.
    30. Aaron Chalfin & Justin McCrary, 2017. "Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 5-48, March.
    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. Qiwei He & Scott Barkowski, 2020. "The effect of health insurance on crime: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 261-277, March.
    2. Lonnie R. Snowden, 2023. "US states' racial bias correlates with less SNAP participation by “undeserving poor” adults and lower unemployment benefit maximums," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(2), pages 133-149, June.
    3. Noghanibehambari, Hamid & Tavassoli, Nahid, 2022. "An ounce of prevention, a pound of cure: The effects of college expansions on crime," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    4. Erling Barth & Henning Finseraas & Anders Kjelsrud & Kalle Moene, 2023. "Hit by the Silk Road: how wage coordination in Europe mitigates the China shock," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(1), pages 32-72, January.
    5. Linchi Hsu & Alexander Henke, 2024. "Unemployment insurance generosity and intimate partner violence," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1461-1481, December.
    6. Rudolph, Maximilian & Starke, Peter, 2020. "How does the welfare state reduce crime? The effect of program characteristics and decommodification across 18 OECD-countries," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    7. Matthew Lang & T. Clay McManus & Georg Schaur, 2019. "The effects of import competition on health in the local economy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 44-56, January.
    8. Wojciech Gryzbowski & Aleksandra Adamicz & Hanna Wysocki, 2021. "The Social Externality of Health Insurance: Evidence from Unemployment Insurance Generosity and Children Mortality," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 2, pages 262-279, July.
    9. Hamid Noghanibehambari & Mahmoud Salari, 2020. "Health benefits of social insurance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(12), pages 1813-1822, December.

    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. Colantone, Italo & Crinò, Rosario & Ogliari, Laura, 2019. "Globalization and mental distress," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 181-207.
    2. repec:smu:ecowpa:1405 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Dix-Carneiro, Rafael & Kovak, Brian K., 2019. "Margins of labor market adjustment to trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 125-142.
    4. Lake, James & Millimet, Daniel L., 2016. "An empirical analysis of trade-related redistribution and the political viability of free trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 156-178.
    5. Che, Yi & Lu, Yi & Pierce, Justin R. & Schott, Peter K. & Tao, Zhigang, 2022. "Did trade liberalization with China influence US elections?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    6. Nina Pavcnik, 2017. "The Impact of Trade on Inequality in Developing Countries," NBER Working Papers 23878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Rachel Griffith & Peter Levell & Agnes Norris Keiller, 2021. "Potential Consequences of Post‐Brexit Trade Barriers for Earnings Inequality in the UK," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(352), pages 839-862, October.
    8. Patrick Arni & Pether H. Egger & Katharina Erhardt & Matthias Gubler & Philip Sauré, 2024. "Heterogeneous Impacts of Trade Shocks on Workers," Working Papers 2409, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    9. Rui Costa & Swati Dhingra & Stephen Machin, 2022. "New dawn fades: Trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1890, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Mastrosavvas, Andreas, 2024. "Social Networks and Brexit: Evidence from a Trade Shock," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    11. Justin Barnette & Jooyoun Park, 2021. "Skill Overshooting in Job Training With the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 35(2), pages 141-156, May.
    12. Zi, Yuan, 2020. "Trade Liberalization and the Great Labor Reallocation," CEPR Discussion Papers 14490, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Che, Yi & Xu, Xun & Zhang, Yan, 2018. "Chinese import competition, crime, and government transfers in US," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 544-567.
    14. Barnette, Justin & Park, Jooyoun, 2019. "Skill and Wage Overshooting in Occupational Training with the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program," MPRA Paper 93412, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Justin R. Pierce & Peter K. Schott & Cristina Tello-Trillo, 2022. "Trade Liberalization and Labor-Market Outcomes: Evidence from US Matched Employer-Employee Data," Working Papers 22-42, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. Dani Rodrik, 2018. "Populism and the economics of globalization," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 1(1), pages 12-33, June.
    17. Keller, Wolfgang & Utar, Hale, 2023. "International trade and job polarization: Evidence at the worker level," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Kondo, Illenin O., 2018. "Trade-induced displacements and local labor market adjustments in the U.S," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 180-202.
    19. Simon Galle & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare & Moises Yi, 2023. "Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(1), pages 331-375.
    20. Borusyak, Kirill & Jaravel, Xavier, 2024. "Are trade wars class wars? The importance of trade-induced horizontal inequality," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    21. Yuan Zi, 2016. "Trade Liberalization and the Great Labor Reallocation," IHEID Working Papers 18-2016, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

    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:bla:ecinqu:v:57:y:2019:i:2:p:1163-1181. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.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.