Determinants of the Crime Rate in Argentina during the 90's

Ana Cerro () and Osvaldo Meloni

Law and Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Since Adam Smith, economists have emphasized income distribution and unemployment as key elements to explain criminal behavior. However, the empirical evidence did not always confirm such conjecture. Departing from the theoretical framework proposed by Becker (1968), the present paper identifies the determinants of the crime rate in Argentina using a panel data for 1990-99. As in previous papers studying the Argentina case, it is found that deterrence variables are important. However, unlike those papers, income distribution, unemployment and per capita GDP also played crucial roles, which has important implications for policy design. Classification JEL: K4, I3

Keywords: Crime rate; income distribution; unemployment; Argentina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2005-04-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 16
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of the crime rate in Argentina during the '90s (2000)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwple:0504001

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