Is There a Link between Unemployment and Criminality in the US Economy? Further Evidence

Using Markov-Switching models, this paper studies the existence of a relationship between the unemployment rate and four different types of crimes in the U.S. economy. After it, using the non-parametric Concordance Index of Harding and Pagan (2002, 2006), the correlation between the cycles of unemployment rate and crime variables is determined. Results con.rm that there is no significant relationship between the unemployment rate, burglary and motor-vehicle theft. However, the unemployment rate has a significant relationship with robbery and larceny. The contemporaneous relationship is positive for robbery and negative for larceny. However, it turns to be positive between the lagged values of the unemployment rate and larceny.

Keywords
Crime, Markov-Switching Models, Unemployment

JEL Classification

C22, K14