IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/uunewp/2004_003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Public Spending on Youths Affect Crime Rates?

Author

Listed:
  • Lindvall, Lars

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract

Two important determinants of crime rates in economic theories of crime are deterrent effects and legal income opportunities. For at least two reasons, youth crimes do not fit into this picture since: 1) most youths do not work 2) deterrent effects, in terms of punishment, are non existent or reduced for youths. Understanding the processes behind youth crimes is important for the reduction of crime both in the short and the long run. This paper explores the role of public spending on youths and crime rates. Using a panel of 261 Swedish municipalities the effects on four crime rates of leisure related municipality expenditure and municipality expenditure on upper secondary school are explored using non-linear fixed effect models. The main findings of the paper are: 1) there exists statistically significant effects of the two types of spending on crime rates 2) there is a trade off between fighting different crimes, i.e. spending that reduces one type of crime might increase another type 3) the effects differ, both in direction and magnitude, between different types of municipalities, e.g. rural vs. urban 4) the effects are not constant, but rather increasing/decreasing in spending level.

Suggested Citation

  • Lindvall, Lars, 2003. "Does Public Spending on Youths Affect Crime Rates?," Working Paper Series 2004:3, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2004_003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nek.uu.se/pdf/wp2004_3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Steven D. Levitt, 1998. "Juvenile Crime and Punishment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1156-1185, December.
    3. Entorf, Horst & Spengler, Hannes, 2000. "Criminality, social cohesion and economic performance," ZEW Discussion Papers 00-27, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    4. Hahn, Jinyong, 1997. "A Note on the Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Some Exponential Panel Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 583-588, February.
    5. Ziggy MacDonald, 2000. "The impact of under-reporting on the relationship between unemployment and property crime," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(10), pages 659-663.
    6. Nilsson, Anna & Agell, Jonas, 2003. "Crime, unemployment and labor market programs in turbulent times," Working Paper Series 2003:14, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    7. Ambrose Leung, 2002. "Delinquency, Social Institutions, and Capital Accumulation," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 158(3), pages 420-440, September.
    8. Hausman, Jerry & Hall, Bronwyn H & Griliches, Zvi, 1984. "Econometric Models for Count Data with an Application to the Patents-R&D Relationship," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 909-938, July.
    9. Gourieroux, Christian & Monfort, Alain & Trognon, Alain, 1984. "Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Methods: Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 681-700, May.
    10. Entorf, Horst & Spengler, Hannes, 2000. "Development and validation of scientific indicators of the relationship between criminality, social cohesion and economic performance," ZEW Dokumentationen 00-05, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1973. "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 521-565, May-June.
    12. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1991. "Specification testing and quasi-maximum- likelihood estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1-2), pages 29-55.
    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. Österholm, Pär, 2004. "Estimating the Relationship between Age Structure and GDP in the OECD Using Panel Cointegration Methods," Working Paper Series 2004:13, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Thomas Aronsson & Sören Blomquist, 2008. "Redistribution and Provision of Public Goods in an Economic Federation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(1), pages 125-143, February.
    3. Sören Blomquist & Vidar Christiansen, 2008. "Taxation and Heterogeneous Preferences," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 64(2), pages 218-244, June.

    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. Entorf, Horst & Spengler, Hannes, 2000. "Criminality, social cohesion and economic performance," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 14296, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    2. Edwards Griffin Sims, 2014. "The Power of the Racketeer: An Empirical Approach," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 219-234, July.
    3. Entorf, Horst & Spengler, Hannes, 2000. "Socioeconomic and demographic factors of crime in Germany: Evidence from panel data of the German states," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 75-106, March.
    4. Milo Bianchi & Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Pinotti, 2012. "Do Immigrants Cause Crime?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(6), pages 1318-1347, December.
    5. Thiess Buettner, 2003. "Local Determinants of Crime: Distinguishing Between Resident and Non-resident Offenders," ERSA conference papers ersa03p396, European Regional Science Association.
    6. Kayaoglu, Aysegul, 2022. "Do refugees cause crime?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    7. Michelle Trawick & Roy Howsen, 2006. "Crime and community heterogeneity: race, ethnicity, and religion," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(6), pages 341-345.
    8. Christophe Bellégo & Joeffrey Drouard, 2019. "Does It Pay to Fight Crime? Evidence From the Pacification of Slums in Rio de Janeiro," Working Papers 2019-08, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    9. Brosnan, Stephen, 2016. "The Socioeconomic Determinants of Crime in Ireland from 2003-2012," MPRA Paper 74118, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Mocan Naci & Unel Bulent, 2017. "Skill-Biased Technological Change, Earnings of Unskilled Workers, and Crime," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-46, November.
    11. Patricia Funk & Peter Kugler, 2003. "Identifying Efficient Crime‐Combating Policies by VAR Models: The Example of Switzerland," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 21(4), pages 525-538, October.
    12. Naci Mocan & Erdal Tekin, 2010. "Ugly Criminals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 15-30, February.
    13. DeAngelo, Gregory, 2012. "Making space for crime: A spatial analysis of criminal competition," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 42-51.
    14. Spengler Hannes, 2006. "Eine panelökonometrische Evaluation des deutschen Strafverfolgungssystems / A Panel-econometric Evaluation of the German Criminal Prosecution System," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 226(6), pages 687-714, December.
    15. Alejandro Mancera, 2008. "Factores socioeconómicos y demográficos de distintas categorías de delitos en Colombia. Prueba desde un panel de datos de las regiones de Colombia," Revista de Economía del Caribe 7112, Universidad del Norte.
    16. Javier Núñez & Jorge Rivera & Xavier Villavicencio & Oscar Molina, 2003. "Determinantes socioeconómicos y demográficos del crimen en Chile," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 30(1 Year 20), pages 55-85, June.
    17. Ignacio Munyo, 2015. "The Juvenile Crime Dilemma," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 201-211, April.
    18. Paolo Buonanno, 2006. "Crime and Labour Market Opportunities in Italy (1993–2002)," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 20(4), pages 601-624, December.
    19. Steven N. Durlauf & Daniel S. Nagin, 2010. "The Deterrent Effect of Imprisonment," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 43-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Blackburn, McKinley L., 2007. "Estimating wage differentials without logarithms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 73-98, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Youth crime; public sepnding; leisure; school;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H39 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Other
    • K49 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Other

    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:hhs:uunewp:2004_003. 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: Ulrika Öjdeby (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nekuuse.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.