Levitt’s Contribution to Economics of Crime: Abortion Cuts Crime Rate?

Anna Bonanno

Rivista di Politica Economica, 2009, issue 1, 111-148

Abstract: The contribution of Steven Levitt – which has stimulated an empirical renaissance in the economic analysis of crime – is analysed in this paper. Lewitt’s book “Freakonomics” (2005) offers a new argument in understanding why crime fell in the 1990s in the USA. One of his main arguments to explain the drop in US crime rates is the legalization of abortion. It is the first time that legalized abortion has been used to explain the crime rate fluctuation. Studies criticizing Levitt’s abortion hypothesis and the debate on this issue are analysed in the paper.

Keywords: economics; of; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rpo:ripoec:y:2009:i:1:p:111-148

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