This paper examines the impact of school accountability on adult crime and economic self-sufficiency. We employ a unique source of linked administrative data from a Southern state and exploit exogenous variation generated by the state's accountability regime. Our findings indicate that a...

These results suggest two handicaps faced by unattractive individuals. First, a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. Second, the level of beauty in high school has an effect on criminal propensity 7-8 years later, which seems to...

Recent theoretical models based on dynamic human capital formation, or social influence, suggest an inverse relationship between criminal activity and economic opportunity and between criminal activity and deterrence, but predict an asymmetric response of crime. In this paper we use three...

This paper uses a data set that consists of the entire history of 6,143 death sentences between 1977 and 1997 in the United States to investigate the impact of capital punishment on homicide. This data set is merged with state panels that include crime and deterrence measures as well as state...

This report summarizes the results of a project which investigated the time series interrelationships between crime, drug use, police, and arrests in New York City. We use monthly data from 1970 through 1990 for New York City. We plot the individual time series for five different non-drug...

This paper investigates the impact of economics conditions (carrots) and sanctions (sticks) on murder, assault, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft in New York City, using monthly time-series data spanning 1974-1999. Carrots are measured by the unemployment rate and the real minimum wage;...

This paper contributes to the debate on the impact of juvenile punishment on adult criminal recidivism and high school completion. We link the universe of case files of those who were convicted of a crime as a juvenile between 1996 and 2012 in a southern U.S. state to the public school...

India started the implementation of a rural public works program in 2006, covering all districts of the country within three years. The program quarantees 100 days of employment per year at minimum wage to each rural household on demand, with the goal of reducing joblessness and poverty. We...

This paper presents the first analysis in the literature of the effect of test-based grade retention on adult criminal convictions. We exploit math and English test cutoffs for promotion to ninth grade in Louisiana using administrative data on all public K-12 students combined with...

Although decades of empirical research has demonstrated that criminal behavior responds to incentives, non-economists frequently express the belief that human beings are not rational enough to make calculated decisions about the costs and benefits of engaging in crime and therefore, a priori...