Dynamic Reflections of Crimes, Quasi Democracy and Misery Index in Pakistan

Abstract

Massive increase in crimes has coexisted with rising inflation and high unemployment for the last couple of decades especially during democratic governments in Pakistan. In this paper, we explore the relationship between crime rate, misery index and democracy in Pakistan from 1975 to 2013. Granger causality test proposed the unidirectional causality running from misery index to crime rate in Pakistan. Estimating the crime function via Pasaran's conditional error correction model, we found the significant long run equilibrium relationship between Okun's misery index and crime rate which implies that rising inflation and unemployment rate are the major driving forces towards increasing crime rates in Pakistan. Finally, empirical evidence from Okun's misery index suggested that people are three times more miserable in quasi democratic periods than that of dictatorship. The Barrow's misery index model verifies that people are twice worsening in quasi democratic periods. Likewise, reported crimes are nearly twice during quasi democracy than quasi dictatorship. The crime model provided the evidence that people during quasi democratic governments are more likely tending towards crime as compared to quasi dictatorship during the study period in Pakistan. This implicitly advocates the fact that half hearted efforts and ill structured apparatus of democracy can augment the tendency of crime and misery rather than solution of such concerns 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.…”

“…For the purpose of the present study, the author modifies the empirical model of Tang and Lean (2009), Piraee and Barzegar (2011), Saboor et al (2016) by including institutional quality. The author empirically specifies the empirical model as stated below:…”

“…It is the addition of inflation rate and unemployment rate in Nigeria. To measure the crime rate in Nigeria, the procedures of Saboor et al (2016) are followed. Crime rate is the number of crime offences recorded as a percentage of population per 10 000 (Saboor, et al, 2016).…”

“…Özcan and Açıkalın (2015) reveal that citizens react to economic hardship by compensating themselves with returns from lottery games. Similarly, Saboor et al (2016) reveals that the misery index and crime are cointegrated. The empirical study also suggests that citizens are more miserable in the democratic regime than dictatorship in Iran.…”

“…They document that there is positive relationship between crime and economic misery. Contrarily, some authors document a negative relationship between the two variables (Piraee & Barzegar, 2011;Saboor, Sadiq & Khan, 2016). Furthermore, the study of Igbinedion and Ebomoyi (2017) reveals that inflation and unemployment positively impact the crime rate, while Adekoya and Abdul Razak (2018) show a negative relationship between the misery index and property crime.…”