City business cycles and crime

Thomas Garrett and Lesli Ott ()

No 2008-026, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: We explore the influence of city-level business cycle fluctuations on crime in 20 large cities in the United States. Our monthly time series analysis considers seven crimes over an approximately 20-year period: murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Short-run changes in economic conditions, as measured by changes in unemployment and wages, are found to have little effect on city crime across many cities, but property crimes were more likely to be influenced by changes in economic conditions than were more violent crimes. Contrary to the deterrence hypothesis, we find strong evidence that in many cities more arrests follow from an increase in crime rather than arrests leading to a decrease in crime. This is true especially for the more visible crimes of robbery and vehicle theft and suggests that city officials desire to remove these crimes from the public's view.

Keywords: Business cycles; Cities and towns; Crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2008.026

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