Crime, Punishment, and Schooling Decisions: Evidence from Colombian Adolescents

Ana Ibáñez, Catherine Rodriguez and David Zarruk

No IDB-WP-413, Research Department Publications from Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department

Abstract: This paper uses a natural policy experiment to estimate how changes in the costs of engaging in criminal activity may influence adolescents' decisions in crime participation and school attendance. The study finds that, after an exogenous decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed on Colombian adolescents, crime rates in Colombian municipalities increased. This effect appears to be larger in municipalities with a higher proportion of adolescents between 14 and 15 years of age. The study provides suggestive evidence that one possible transmission channel for this effect is a decrease in the effort of the police force to capture teenage suspects. The study also finds that the probability that boys of this same age group attend school decreased following the change in the juvenile justice system. This effect is stronger for boys from homes where the heads of household are less educated.

JEL-codes: D19 I25 K14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=37854137 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=37854137 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=37854137)

Related works:
Working Paper: Crime, Punishment, and Schooling Decisions: Evidence from Colombian Adolescents (2013)
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:idb:wpaper:idb-wp-413

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Department Publications from Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().