Happiness and Beliefs in Criminal Environments

Rafael Di Tella, Robert MacCulloch and Hugo Ñopo ()

No 4605, RES Working Papers from Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department

Abstract: This paper uses newly available data to describe the distribution of crime victimization and other criminal activities (including drug trafficking and corruption) around the world. The paper then documents a negative (positive) correlation between measures of criminal activity and happiness and measures of positive (negative) emotions. The paper also studies the correlation between ideological beliefs and criminal activity, finding that crime victims are more likely to believe that hard work does not pay and that the government should increase the amount of redistribution to the poor.

Keywords: Happiness; crime; beliefs; income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 I39 K42 Y80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-law and nep-ltv
Date: 2009-01
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:wpaper:4605

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