Robots and Crime

Yang Liang, Joseph J. Sabia and Dhaval Dave

No 33603, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Leveraging county-level variation in exposure to industry-specific foreign-based robotics shocks, this study is the first to explore the relationship between U.S. robotics expansions and crime. Instrumental variables estimates show that a 10 percent increase in robotics exposure led to a 0.2 to 0.3 percent increase in property crime arrests. In contrast, we find little evidence of a relationship between robotics expansions and violent crime. Our estimates are consistent with robotics-induced declines in employment and earnings among low-skilled manufacturing workers. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that during the period over which robotics exposure induced adverse employment effects, such exposure generated approximately $322 million (2024$) in additional crime costs nationally.

JEL-codes: D24 J20 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
Note: DAE EH ITI LE LS PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33603.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:33603

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33603
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().