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American Economic Review Vol. 93 No. 5 2003

Crime, Inequality, and Unemployment

Kenneth Burdett1; Ricardo Lagos2; Randall Wright1

1 Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104. · 2 Department of Economics, New York University, 269 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10003.

Abstract

There is much discussion of the relationships between crime, inequality, and unemployment. We construct a model where all three are endogenous. We find that introducing crime into otherwise standard models of labor markets has several interesting implications. For example, it can lead to wage inequality among homogeneous workers. Also, it can generate multiple equilibria in natural but previously unexplored ways; hence two identical neighborhoods can end up with different levels of crime, inequality, and unemployment. We discuss the effects of anti-crime policies like changing jail sentences, as well as more traditional labor market policies like changing unemployment insurance.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

DOI
10.1257/000282803322655536
Volume
93
Issue
5
Pages
1764-1777
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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