The unequal impact of natural light on crime

Emiliano Tealde ()
Additional contact information
Emiliano Tealde: Catholic University of Uruguay

Journal of Population Economics, 2022, vol. 35, issue 3, No 3, 893-934

Abstract: Abstract This paper studies the relationship between ambient light and criminal activity. I develop a Becker-style crime model that shows that a sudden increase in ambient light produces a larger reduction in crime in areas with less public lighting. Daylight savings time (DST), the natural experiment used, induces a sharp increase in natural light during crime-intense hours. Using geolocated data on crime and public lighting for the city of Montevideo in Uruguay, regression discontinuity estimates identify a strong and statistically significant decrease in robbery of 17%. The decrease is larger in poorly lit areas. Computing the level of public lighting at which DST has no effect on crime reduction, I identify the minimum level of public lighting that an area should target.

Keywords: DST; Property crime; Public lighting; Heterogeneous effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-021-00831-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:35:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s00148-021-00831-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-021-00831-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().