Econometric Studies to the Economic and Social Factors of Crime

Transcription

1 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Econometric Studies to the Economic and Social Factors of Crime ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universitcit Amsterdam, op gczag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. L.M. Bouter, in hct openbaar te verdcdigen ten overstaan van dc promotiecommissie van de faculteit dcr Economische Wetcnschappen en Bedrijfskunde op donderdag 7 mei 2009 om uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Suncica Nikola Vujic geboren te Bclgrado, Joegoslavic

2 Acknowledgements vii xiii 1 Introduction Motivation and background Outline The impact of sentence reform in Virginia Economic trends and cycles in crime Education and crime Early behavioural problems and human capital Software 8 2 Intervention Time Series Analysis of Crime Rates: The Impact of Sentence Reform in Virginia Introduction Changes in criminal justice system of Virginia Plan and details of empirical intervention study Data description Intervention analysis Preliminary data analysis Preliminary approaches to intervention analysis Regression analysis Regression models with ARMA errors Box-Jenkins ARIMA model approach The structural time series approach The basic structural time scries model State space representation, filtering and smoothing Equivalence between STS and ARIMA models Structural time scries analysis results The multivariate structural time series approach The multivariate STS approach: state space formulation Multivariate STS intervention analysis results General discussion of empirical findings Relation to differencc-in-difference approach 56

3 ' Review of empirical findings 61 2.A Appendix 67 2.A.I Diagnostic and Goodness-of-Fit Tests 67 2.A.2 Definitions of the analysed crime categories 69 Economic Trends and Cycles in Crime: A Study for England and Wales Introduction Decomposition of the economic and crime series Data and methodology Trend-cycle decompositions for economic and crime series Regression effects Multivariate trend-cycle decompositions The multivariate unobserved components model Multivariate decomposition results Multivariate decomposition results with explanatory variables Model for thefts Multivariate model with economics, crime and police Literature overview on crime and economic incentives Criminal opportunity and criminal motivation Unemployment and crime Income and crime Conclusion A Appendix A.I Definitions of variables and sources of data 102 Crime and Education: New Evidence From Britain Introduction How education can impact on crime Crime data sources and schooling reform in Britain Crime data sources Background on the schooling reform in Britain Data description and matching approaches Data Approaches Empirical approach The statistical model Logit models from Census data Estimation results Approach Approach Conclusions A Appendix 131

4 5 Why Are Criminals Less Educated than Non-Criminals? Evidence from a Cohort of Young Australian Twins Introduction Previous studies Empirical strategy Description of data The effect of early arrests on educational attainment The effect of human capital on crime Robustness Missing values due to the routing of the questionnaire Measurement error Decomposing crime education relationship Conclusions and discussion A Appendix A.I Variable definitions A.2 Robustness checks tables The Effect of Childhood Conduct Disorder on Human Capital: Evidence from a Cohort of Young Australian Twins Introduction Previous studies Data Conduct disorder Positive and negative human capital Descriptive statistics Methodology Main estimation results The effect of conduct disorder on human capital The effect of the timing of conduct disorder behaviours Summary of the timing of conduct disorder Robustness checks Missing values due to the routing of the questionnaire Excluding pairs of twins with large differences in education Measurement error in conduct disorder Spill-over effects within pairs of twins Summary of robustness checks Conclusions A Appendix A.1 Variable definitions A.2 APA DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder Conclusions 195 Bibliography 199 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch) 213

5 xvi Sazetak (Summary in Serbian) 221