EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Crime and economic incentives

Stephen Machin and Costas Meghir

No W00/17, IFS Working Papers from Institute for Fiscal Studies

Abstract: We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of England and Wales between 1975 and 1996. We find that falls in the wages of unskilled workers leads to increases in crime. We carry out a number of experiments with different wage measures, including a wage measure that accounts for the effects of changes in the composition of employment. These reinforce the picture of a strong impact of wages on crime. The result that incentives play a central role is reinforced further by the strong impact on crime of deterrence measures and of a measure of the returns to crime.

Pages: 33 pp
Date: 2000-09-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0017.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0017.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0017.pdf [302 Found]--> https://ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0017.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Crime and Economic Incentives (2015) Downloads
Journal Article: Crime and Economic Incentives (2004) Downloads
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:ifs:ifsewp:00/17

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE
mailbox@ifs.org.uk

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFS Working Papers from Institute for Fiscal Studies The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emma Hyman (emma_h@ifs.org.uk).

 
Page updated 2025-01-01
Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:00/17