Blomquist, Johan
- Lund University
Abstract
Many empirical studies of the economics of crime focus solely on the determinants thereof, and do not consider the dynamic and cross-sectional properties of their data. As a response to this, the current paper offers an in-depth analysis of this issue using data covering 21 Swedish counties from 1975 to 2010. The results suggest that the crimes considered are non-stationary, and that this cannot be attributed to county-specific disparities alone, but that there are also a small number of common stochastic trends to which groups of counties tend to revert. In an attempt to explain these common stochastic trends, we look for a long-run cointegrated relationship between unemployment and crime. Overall, the results do not support cointegration, and suggest that previous findings of a significant unemployment-crime relationship might be spurious. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Crime; Unemployment; Panel data; Unit roots; Cointegration; Cross-section dependence
Published in
Social Science Research
2014, volume: 44, pages: 114-125
Publisher: ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
SLU Authors
Global goals (SDG)
SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
UKÄ Subject classification
Sociology (excluding Social work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2013.11.007
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/67864