This paper considers the relationship between inequality and crime using data from urban counties. The behavior of property and violent crime are quite different. Inequality has no effect on property crime but a strong and robust impact on violent crime, with an elasticity above 0.5. By contrast, poverty and police activity have significant effects on property crime, but little on violent crime. Property crime is well explained by the economic theory of crime, while violent crime is better explained by strain and social disorganization theories.

Abstract Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass-produced consumer durable and were Adam Smith’s preeminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95% over the preceding century, a claim that this article attempts to evaluate. We look at changes in the reported value of over 3,200 stolen watches from criminal trials in the Old Bailey in London from 1685 to 1810. Before allowing for quality improvements, we find that the real price of watches in nearly all categories falls steadily by 1.3% a year, equivalent to a fall of 75% over a century, showing that sustained innovation in the production of a highly complex artifact had already appeared in one important sector of the British economy by the early eighteenth century.

To test a model of contagion—where individuals hear some bad news and communicate it to their acquaintances, who then pass it on, leading to a market panic—requires a knowledge of the information networks of participants, something hitherto unavailable. For two panics in the 1850's this paper examines the behavior of Irish depositors in a New York bank. As recent immigrants, their social network was determined largely by their place of origin in Ireland, and where they lived in New York. During both panics this social network turns out to be the prime determinant of behavior. (JEL G21, N21)

Although there are many competing explanations for the Industrial Revolution, there has been no effort to evaluate them econometrically. This paper analyzes how the very different patterns of growth across the counties of England between the 1760s and 1830s can be explained by a wide range of potential variables. We find that industrialization occurred in areas that began with low wages but high mechanical skills, whereas other variables, such as literacy, banks, and proximity to coal, have little explanatory power. Against the view that living standards were stagnant during the Industrial Revolution, we find that real wages rose sharply in the industrializing north and declined in the previously prosperous south.