Using National Youth Survey (NYS) data, we examine the relationship of current criminal activity and past arrests using an ordered probit model with unobserved heterogeneity. Past arrests raise current criminal activity only for the non-criminal type, while past criminal experience raises...

This paper discusses the relationship between education and crime from an economic perspective, developing a human capital-based model that sheds light on key ways in which early childhood programs and policies that encourage schooling may affect both juvenile and adult crime. The paper first...

This paper investigates the impact of unskilled workers' earnings on crime. Following the literature on wage inequality and skill-biased technological change, we employ CPS data to create state-year as well as state-year-and (broad) industry specific measures of skill-biased technological...

A growing body of work suggests that education offers a wide-range of benefits that extend beyond increases in labor market productivity. Improvements in education can lower crime, improve health, and increase voting and democratic participation. This chapter reviews recent developments on these...

Three quarters of American children have been exposed to neighborhood violence in their lifetimes. Most of the existing research has concluded that exposure to violence leads to restricted emotional development, aggressive behavior and poor school outcomes. However, this literature fails to...

We examine the relationship between marijuana use and non-drug related crime using data on arrests from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program and Uniform Crime Reports. There is a positive association between self-reported use at the time of the offence and non-drug related violent,...

We find anecdotal evidence suggesting that governments in poor countries have a more left wing rhetoric than those in OECD countries. Thus, it appears that capitalist rhetoric doesn't flow to poor countries. A possible explanation is that corruption, which is more widespread in poor countries,...

We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. It shows that even if the direct harm to victims of hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert more law-enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate...

Previous empirical studies have typically uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime. One problem with those studies is a failure to adequately deal with the simultaneity between police and crime: while police may or may not reduce crime, there is little doubt that expenditures on police...

We collect data on the rules and practices of financial and conflict disclosure by politicians in 175 countries. Although two thirds of the countries have some disclosure laws, less than a third make disclosures available to the public. Disclosure is more extensive in richer and more democratic...