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Joakim Westerlund. Photo.

Joakim Westerlund

Professor, Programme director – Master of Data Analytics and Business Economics

Joakim Westerlund. Photo.

A Non-Stationary Panel Data Investigation of the Unemployment–Crime Relationship

Author

  • Johan Blomquist
  • Joakim Westerlund

Summary, in English

Many empirical studies of the economics of crime focus solely on the determinants thereof, and do not consider the dynamic and cross-sectional properties of their data. As a response to this, the current paper offers an in-depth analysis of this issue using data covering 21 Swedish counties from 1975 to 2010. The results suggest that the crimes considered are non-stationary, and that this cannot be attributed to county-specific disparities alone, but that there are also a small number of common stochastic trends to which groups of counties tend to revert. In an attempt to explain these common stochastic trends, we look for a long-run cointegrated relationship between unemployment and crime. Overall, the results do not support cointegration, and suggest that previous findings of a significant unemployment–crime relationship might be spurious.

Department/s

  • Department of Economics

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

114-125

Publication/Series

Social Science Research

Volume

44

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Economics

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0049-089X