This paper provides a unified explanation for why blacks commit more crime, are located in poorer neighborhoods and receive lower wages than whites. If everybody believes that blacks are more criminal than whites - even if there is no basis for this - then blacks are offered lower wages and, as...

Criminals are embedded in a network of relationships. Social ties among criminals are modeled by means of a graph where criminals compete for a booty and benefit from local interactions with their neighbours. Each criminal decides in a non-cooperative way how much crime effort he will exert. We...

We analyze delinquent networks of adolescents in the United States. We develop a dynamic network formation model showing who the key player is, i.e. the criminal who once removed generates the highest possible reduction in aggregate crime level. We then structurally estimate our model using data...

The aim of this paper is to show that both location and stereotypical racial beliefs matter for explaining the high criminality rate among blacks in cities. In our model, blacks and whites are identical in all respects. However, if, for not economic but extrinsic reasons, everybody (including...

We study peer effects in crime by analyzing co-offending networks. We first provide a credible estimate of peer effects in these networks equal to 0.17. This estimate implies a social multiplier of 1.2 for those individuals linked to only one co-offender and a social multiplier of 2 for those...

We consider a model where the criminal decision of each individual is affected by not only her own characteristics, but also by the characteristics of her friends (contextual effects). We determine who the key player is, i.e. the criminal who once removed generates the highest reduction in total...