Leaders in juvenile crime
Leaders in juvenile crime
This paper presents a new theory of crime where leaders transmit a crime technology and act as a role model for other criminals. We show that, in equilibrium, an individual’s crime effort and criminal decisions depend on the geodesic distance to the leader in his or her network of social contacts. By using data on friendship networks among U.S. high-school students, we structurally estimate the model and find evidence supporting its predictions. In particular, by using a definition of a criminal leader that is exogenous to the network formation of friendship links, we find that the longer is the distance to the leader, the lower is the criminal activity of the delinquents and the less likely they are to become criminals. We finally perform a counterfactual experiment that reveals that a policy that removes all criminal leaders from a school can, on average, reduce criminal activity by about 20% and the individual probability of becoming a criminal by 10%.
Closeness centrality, Crime leaders, Criminal decisions, Social distance
638-667
Diaz-Avalos, Carlos
c3d206d1-9a32-4e8c-88ab-0b7f2cb18e30
Patacchiniz, Eleonora
3992e46a-df1e-4f23-9ee9-e79df70c5f83
Verdier, Thierry
fda548b6-a608-4741-b8d3-1af126668986
Zenou, Yves
38bf0c72-462b-4c08-8fd1-ce365b0296dc
December 2021
Diaz-Avalos, Carlos
c3d206d1-9a32-4e8c-88ab-0b7f2cb18e30
Patacchiniz, Eleonora
3992e46a-df1e-4f23-9ee9-e79df70c5f83
Verdier, Thierry
fda548b6-a608-4741-b8d3-1af126668986
Zenou, Yves
38bf0c72-462b-4c08-8fd1-ce365b0296dc
Diaz-Avalos, Carlos, Patacchiniz, Eleonora, Verdier, Thierry and Zenou, Yves
(2021)
Leaders in juvenile crime.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 192, .
(doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2021.10.034).
Abstract
This paper presents a new theory of crime where leaders transmit a crime technology and act as a role model for other criminals. We show that, in equilibrium, an individual’s crime effort and criminal decisions depend on the geodesic distance to the leader in his or her network of social contacts. By using data on friendship networks among U.S. high-school students, we structurally estimate the model and find evidence supporting its predictions. In particular, by using a definition of a criminal leader that is exogenous to the network formation of friendship links, we find that the longer is the distance to the leader, the lower is the criminal activity of the delinquents and the less likely they are to become criminals. We finally perform a counterfactual experiment that reveals that a policy that removes all criminal leaders from a school can, on average, reduce criminal activity by about 20% and the individual probability of becoming a criminal by 10%.
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Accepted/In Press date: 29 October 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 15 November 2021
Published date: December 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We thank the editor, Sudipta Sarangi, two anonymous referees, and Michelle Rendall for very helpful comments. Thierry Verdier acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council grant number 324004 (TECTACOM project).
Funding Information:
We thank the editor, Sudipta Sarangi, two anonymous referees, and Michelle Rendall for very helpful comments. Thierry Verdier acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council grant number 324004 (TECTACOM project).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords:
Closeness centrality, Crime leaders, Criminal decisions, Social distance
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 452607
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/452607
ISSN: 0167-2681
PURE UUID: 59c72473-fb47-48aa-b113-1bec4c3324ea
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Date deposited: 11 Dec 2021 11:29
Last modified: 12 Jul 2024 04:03
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Contributors
Author:
Carlos Diaz-Avalos
Author:
Eleonora Patacchiniz
Author:
Thierry Verdier
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