Crime and economic conditions in Malaysia: An ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

Muzafar Shah Habibullah () and A.H. Baharom
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Baharom Abdul Hamid ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Economists recognized that economic conditions have an impact on crime activities. In this study we employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure to analyze the impact of economic conditions on various categories of criminal activities in Malaysia for the period 1973-2003. Real gross national product was used as proxy for economic conditions in Malaysia. Our results indicate that murder, armed robbery, rape, assault, daylight burglary and motorcycle theft exhibit long-run relationships with economic conditions, and the causal effect in all cases runs from economic conditions to crime rates and not vice versa. In the long-run, strong economic performances have a positive impact on murder, rape, assault, daylight burglary and motorcycle theft, while on the other hand, economic conditions have negative impact on armed robbery.

Keywords: Bounds Testing; Malaysia; Crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-sea
Date: 2008-10-12
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:11910

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