We review economics research regarding the effect of police, punishments, and work on
crime, with a particular focus on papers from the last twenty years. Evidence in favor of …

ABSTRACT A growing body of work suggests that education offers a wide-range of benefits
that extend beyond increases in labor market productivity. Improvements in education can …

We estimate the effect of education on participation in criminal activity using changes in state
compulsory schooling laws over time to account for the endogeneity of schooling decisions …

In this article, we study the crime reducing potential of education, presenting causal
statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in …

This paper investigates the effect of early exposure to neighborhood crime on subsequent
criminal behavior of youth exploiting a unique natural experiment between 1986 and 1998 …

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between unemployment and crime. Using US state
data, we estimate the effect of unemployment on the rates of seven felony offenses. We …

Crime dropped sharply and unexpectedly in the United States in the 1990s. I conclude that
four factors collectively explain the entire drop in crime: increases in the number of police …

This paper considers the relationship between inequality and crime using data from urban
counties. The behavior of property and violent crime are quite different. Inequality has no …

What is the effect of an increase in the overall level of human capital on the economy of a
city? Although much is known about the private return to education, much less is known …

In the last few decades, rational choice theory has emerged as a bedrock theory in the fields
of economics, sociology, psychology, and political science. Although rational choice theory …