Does crime depend on the “state” of economic misery?

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of economic misery on criminal activity the small island state, Barbados, using Markov-switching models. No evidence of a contemporaneous relationship between economic misery and crime was uncovered. On the other hand, Property and Theft of Motor crime respond to the state of misery with a lag of one period, supporting the criminal motivation effect. Economic misery is in the same regime as Property crime 50 percent of the time, and with Theft from Motor crime almost 60 percent of the time. There is a procyclical contemporaneous relationship between inflation and Property crime, lasting up to two periods. Unemployment's impact on Theft of Motor crime manifests after three periods, and supports the criminal opportunity hypothesis. Finally, Fraud-related crime and unemployment are concordant. Typical demand side policies to reduce the level of misery may not have the desired effect on crime, as reducing the unemployment rate or inflation rate respectively, could lead to an increase in the rate of crime, via the Phillips curve relationship. The most promising course of action may be supply side policies, designed to improve the long-run performance of the economy.

Institutional Quality, Economic Misery and Crime Rate in Nigeria

“…The main goal of the paper is to examine the effect of institutional quality and misery index on the crime rate in Nigeria from 1986 to2016.For this purpose, the study embraces the theoretical model of Becker (1968) and Ehrlich (1973), which has been a baseline for most empirical models on crime and factors influencing it (Piraee & Barzegar, 2011;Saboor, et al, 2016;Lorde, et al, 2016). The rational behaviour theory of Becker-Ehrlich suggests positive nexus between unemployment and crime rate.…”

“…This leads to the use of misery index as a variable (Di Tella, et al, 2001). Hence, unemployment alone may not provide sufficient indication of economic distress (Lorde, et al, 2016).…”

“…There are many factors attracting the attention of scholars to investigate the possible relationship between economic misery and the crime rate in developing countries. First, the 2008 global financial crisis brought economic hardship to every developing country, which served as one of the motivational factors to individuals who engaged in criminal activities simply to generate income in order to compensate for income deficiency (Bahmani-Oskooee & Oyolola, 2009;Rosenfeld, 2014;Lorde, Jackman & Lowe, 2016;Amin, 2019). Second, Nigeria experienced economic recession in 2015, which continued until the third quarter of 2016; this further brought a lot of hardship to the citizens, including a high rate of unemployment (Adelowokan, Maku, Babasanya & Adesoye, 2019).…”

“…Second, Nigeria experienced economic recession in 2015, which continued until the third quarter of 2016; this further brought a lot of hardship to the citizens, including a high rate of unemployment (Adelowokan, Maku, Babasanya & Adesoye, 2019). Hence, crime actually increases in the wake of the recession (Uggen, 2012;Lorde et al, 2016). There are high levels of the crime rate, including armed robbery and kidnapping in the country.…”

Does the Misery Index Influence a U.S. President’s Political Re-Election Prospects?

“…Researchers in recent years have examined the association of the misery index with several socioeconomic variables. For instance, Lorde et al (2016), Nunley et al (2011), Tang and Lean (2009), among others, studied the association of the crime rate and the misery index.…”