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Cited by 1,076

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime

Raphael, Steven, Winter‐Ebmer, Rudolf·2001·The Journal of Law and Economics

Abstract

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.

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Metadata

Authors
Raphael, S., & Winter‐Ebmer, R.
Venue
The Journal of Law and Economics
Published
2001-04
Volume
44
Issue
1
Pages
259-283
ISSN
  • 0022-2186 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5285
OpenAlex
W3121423326
Cited by
1,076
References
33
FWCI
58.48
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/320275
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Raphael, S., & Winter‐Ebmer, R. (2001). Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime. The Journal of Law and Economics. https://doi.org/10.1086/320275

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.