Full Citation
Title: Essays on the Environmental Determinants of Crime
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2015
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Abstract: In the extensive literature on temperature and crime, a clear positive correlation between observed temperature and criminal activity has been documented. The dominant explanation for this effect is that observed temperature conditions affect planning, which leads to changes in the number of opportunities for crime. Since planning necessarily applies to activities occurring in the future, it is more accurate to say that the plans one makes depend on temperature expectations, both in the current period and the near future. In this paper, I examine the impact of temperature expectations on daily violent crime and property theft levels for a set of 50 U.S. cities during the 2004-2012 period. I find that the effect of observed maximum temperature on a given day is largely captured by temperature expectations for that day. However, I also find that crime is affected by expectations about weather in the near future, and that forecast errors (i.e. unexpectedly hot or cold temperatures) significantly impact violent crime (but not property theft). This set of findings represents an important contribution to the temperature-crime literature, and provides new insight into the determinants of criminal labor supply. Furthermore, these results have significant policy implications for short-run crime forecasting.
Url: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/113489/jaladner_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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Authors: Ladner, Justin
Institution: University of Michigan
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Publisher Location: Ann Arbor, MI
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Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - ATUS
Topics: Crime and Deviance
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