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THE IMPACT OF INFLATION ON PROPERTY CRIME
Author(s) -
Nunley John M.,
Stern Michael L.,
Seals Richard A.,
Zietz Joachim
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/coep.12156
Subject(s) - inflation (cosmology) , economics , property crime , spillover effect , econometrics , property (philosophy) , control (management) , state space , monetary economics , macroeconomics , mathematics , violent crime , statistics , philosophy , physics , criminology , management , epistemology , sociology , theoretical physics
Using U.S. data from 1950 to 2010, we analyze to what extent inflation raises the incidence of property crime. To match our theoretical predictions, we consider different types of property crime (larceny, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and robbery) and broad and narrow definitions of inflation separately. We control for the state of the business cycle and demographic changes over time explicitly. Unobserved or difficult‐to‐measure determinants of property crime are captured through a stochastic‐trend specification within a state‐space framework. We find a robust statistical link between inflation and each of the four property crime rates. Our findings are robust to alternative definitions of inflation and the inclusion or exclusion of different control variables. In terms of policy, our findings suggest that monetary policy that creates inflation has costly spillover effects. ( JEL J10, J11)