There is a vigorous debate on whether arrests for domestic violence (DV) will deter future abuse or create a retaliatory backlash. We study how arrests affect the dynamics of DV using administrative data for over 124,000 DV emergency calls (999 calls) for West Midlands, the second most populous...

There is a vigorous debate on whether arrests for domestic violence (DV) will deter future abuse or create a retaliatory backlash. We study how arrests affect the dynamics of DV using administrative data for over 124,000 DV emergency calls (999 calls) for West Midlands, the second most populous...

Ökonomische Unsicherheiten führen auch in der Mitte der Gesellschaft zu wachsendem Prekarisierungsdruck. Prekarisierungsprozesse durchziehen eine breite gesellschaftliche Gruppe (Castel, 2009, S. 30). Es ist nicht mehr die vielzitierte Unterschicht, die sogenannten Bildungsfernen oder Menschen...

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. This paper examines the effect of weather shocks on various types of crime. Using a 12-year panel data set at monthly resolution on the police ward level, we observe a short-term effect of temperatures on violent crime, supporting the...

This paper develops a dynamic life-cycle equilibrium model of crime with hetero-geneous agents and human capital accumulation. Agents decide at each point in time whether to commit crimes by comparing potential gains from crime to the expected cost of punishment (determined from the probability...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

We examine 70,581 felony court cases filed in Chicago, IL during the period 1990-2007. We exploit case randomization to assess the impact of judge assignment and sentencing decisions on the arrival rates of new charges. Relative to prior research, we document an important source of heterogeneity...

We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate’s party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

This paper studies the impact of compulsory schooling on in-school violence using individual-level administrative data matching education and criminal records from Queensland. Exploiting a dropout age reform in 2006, it defines a series of regression-discontinuity specifications. While police...

This research provides the first evidence on the impacts of waiting times for treatment for a substance use disorder (SUD). Using rich linked administrative information from Norway, we study the impact of waiting time on health-care utilization, employment and crime for patients who enter...

This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5-7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum fuels. However, the impact of oil theft is...

Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of air pollution on crime in large cities. We provide first evidence on the potential effect of air pollution on criminal activity using a broader set of geographical regions with lower air pollution levels. We use a unique combination of daily crime...

Greek-letter student social groups, better known as fraternities and sororities, are a ubiquitous feature on many American higher education campuses. These organizations, especially fraternities, have a reputation for encouraging unruly and improper behavior among both members and non-members....

Using administrative criminal records from Texas, this paper shows how heat affects criminal defendants, police officers, prosecutors, and judges. It finds that arrests increase by up to 15 percent on hot days, driven by increases in violent crime. There is no evidence that charging-day heat...

This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...

White Lists are lists of firms set up at each Italian prefecture. It is a relatively young instrument born as an experimental project designed to solve problems for particular conditions of crime and corruption in the Italian territory. This work aims to understand if the "White List" tool can...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...

The relationship between inequality and crime has been of long-standing interest to social scientists of various disciplines. While theorical work from both economics and sociology postulates a positive link between the two, the empirical evidence is rather inconclusive and typically focuses on...

Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the birth rate halved in East Germany. Despite their small sizes, the cohorts conceived during this period of socio-economic turmoil were, as they grew up in reunified Germany, markedly more likely to be arrested than cohorts conceived a few years...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...

Incarceration is a crucial part of the scholarly analysis of crime, but what happens inside penal institutions largely remains a 'black box' (Western, 2021). This paper studies the impact of the new psychoactive substances (NPS) epidemic within prisons. NPS are powerful addictive chemical...

This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on crime in India. We exploit the quasi-random variation in the outcome of close elections between candidates with and without criminal accusations to instrument the share of...

This article estimates the impact of weather on crime in the Czech Republic. Using detailed crime data during the years 2005-2015, I show that temperature has a significant positive effect on the total number of assaults, thefts, robberies and sexual crimes recorded. Furthermore, precipitation...

This second of two papers on global oil theft discusses ways to reduce oil theft, misappropriation, and fraud. At US$133 billion per year, oil is the largest stolen natural resource globally, while fuel is the most smuggled natural resource. Oil theft equates to 5-7 per cent of the global market...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

A stylized fact in criminology holds that those who commit crimes are more likely to be victims of crime, and vice versa. We use population-level administrative data of all police investigations in New Zealand to examine the possibility of this victim-offender overlap. Two-way fixed effects and...

The United States witnessed an unprecedented crime wave in the second half of the twentieth century, with the total index crime rate more than tripling between 1960-1980. Little is known about the causes of this surge in criminal activity across the country. This paper investigates the role...

Financial misconduct has come into the spotlight in recent years, causing market regulators to increase the reach and severity of interventions. We show that at times the economic benefits of illicit financial activity outweigh the costs of litigation. We illustrate our argument with data from...