Rethinking the crime reducing effect of education? Mechanisms and evidence from regional divides

Ylenia Brilli and Marco Tonello ()
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Marco Tonello: Bank of Italy

No 1008, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: We estimate the contemporaneous effect of education on adolescent crime by exploiting the variation in crime rates between different cohorts and at different ages that followed a reform that raised the school-leaving age in Italy. A 1 percentage-point increase of the enrollment rate reduces adolescent crime by 1.3 per cent in the North of Italy but increases it by 3.9 per cent in the South. The crime-reducing effect depends mainly on incapacitation (i.e. adolescents stay in school instead of on the street); the crime-increasing effect is consistent with a channel of criminal capital accumulation, operating through social interactions and organized-crime networks.

Keywords: adolescent crime; school enrollment; incapacitation; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I28 J13 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-hrm, nep-law and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1008_15

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