. These reinforce the picture of a strong impact of wages on crime. The result that incentives play a central role is …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 …

In economic models of crime, changing economic incentives alter the participation of individuals in criminal activities … organizing our discussion on crime and economic incentives, we first document the significant rise of the economics of crime as a … research field and then go on to review the evidence on the relationship between crime and economic incentives. We divide this …