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The relationship between crime, punishment and economic conditions: is reliable inference possible when crimes are under‐recorded?
Author(s) -
Pudney S.,
Deadman D.,
Pyle D.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/1467-985x.00158
Subject(s) - punishment (psychology) , estimation , econometrics , inference , observational error , law enforcement , computer science , statistical inference , enforcement , statistics , criminology , psychology , economics , mathematics , social psychology , law , artificial intelligence , political science , management
We investigate the estimation of dynamic models of criminal activity, when there is significant under‐recording of crime. We give a theoretical analysis and use simulation techniques to investigate the resulting biases in conventional regression estimates. We find the biases to be of little practical significance. We develop and apply a new simulated maximum likelihood procedure that estimates simultaneously the measurement error and crime processes, using extraneous survey data. This also confirms that measurement error biases are small. Our estimation results for data from England and Wales imply a significant response of crime to both the economic and the enforcement environment.