Crime and Social Sanction
نویسندگان
چکیده
Social sanctions may be a strong deterrent of crime. This paper presents a formal model that relates crime and social sanction to social interaction density. We empirically test the theoretical predictions using a provincial level panel dataset on different crimes in Italy between 1996 and 2003. We exploit detailed demographic and geo-morphological information to develop exogenous measures of social interaction density. We estimate a spatial panel model by means of a GMM procedure and we find that provinces with denser social interactions display significantly and substantially lower rates of property crime, but not of violent crime. JEL Classification: A14, K42, Z13.
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