Property Crime and Law Enforcement in Italy. A Regional Panel Analysis 1980-95

Abstract: In this paper a Cobb-Douglas utility function is introduced and solved for a dynamic equation of property crime supply and its determinants, namely deterrents and income. Thereafter, all variables are empirically tested, by means of a simultaneous equations model, for the sign and magnitude of their mutual relationships in a panel of Italy and its two economically and culturally different areas, the North and the South. The period scrutinized is 1980-95 and the results obtained widely differ among the two. When appropriately modeled and instrumented, in fact, property crime is found to react to police and criminal justice deterrence, and also to incomes, with different parameter magnitudes and significance. The same diversity applies to the parameters related to deterrence, flawed in quite a few cases by scarce law enforcement and productivity, and to those related to local incomes, which still reflect for the South a tendency of crime to substitute for legal activities.

Keywords: Models with Panel Data; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-geo, nep-law, nep-reg, nep-upt and nep-ure
Date: Written 2005-12-01
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 31
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://129.3.20.41/eps/em/papers/0512/0512001.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Property Crime and Law Enforcement in Italy. A Regional Panel Analysis 1980-95 (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Econometrics from EconWPA
Series data maintained by EconWPA ().