Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime
利用美国州级数据，通过控制人口和经济因素并采用工具变量，发现失业率上升显著增加财产犯罪率，但对暴力犯罪影响较弱。
In this paper, we analyze the relationship between unemployment and crime. Using U.S. state data, we estimate the effect of unemployment on the rates of seven felony offenses. We control extensively for state-level demographic and economic factors and estimate specifications that include state-specific time trends, state effects, and year effects. In addition, we use prime defense contracts and a state-specific measure of exposure to oil shocks as instruments for unemployment rates. We find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime rates that are stable across model specifications. Our estimates suggest that a substantial portion of the decline in property crime rates during the 1990s is attributable to the decline in the unemployment rate. The evidence for violent crime is considerably weaker. However, a closer analysis of the violent crime of rape yields some evidence that the employment prospects of males are weakly related to state rape rates. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.