[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbt/econwp/10-57.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The impact of natural disasters on crime

Author

Listed:
Abstract
This study addresses the following questions in the context of a developing coun- try. Do crimes increase following natural disasters? Does an upcoming election or the presence of a strong local media, which potentially increases the incentive of the gov- ernment to provide disaster relief, mitigate the e ect of disasters on crime rates? I nd that crime rates tend to increase following moderate to big disasters. Furthermore, a higher pre-disaster growth of newspapers has a mitigating e ect on the crime response to disasters. Elections also in uence the crime response to disasters. Crimes are more likely to rise following disasters in the years that are close to an election year.

Suggested Citation

  • Susmita Roy, 2010. "The impact of natural disasters on crime," Working Papers in Economics 10/57, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbt:econwp:10/57
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.canterbury.ac.nz/cbt/econwp/1057.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Healy, Andrew & Malhotra, Neil, 2009. "Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 387-406, August.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Finlay, Jocelyn E., 2009. "Fertility response to natural disasters : the case of three high mortality earthquakes," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4883, The World Bank.
    4. Toya, Hideki & Skidmore, Mark, 2007. "Economic development and the impacts of natural disasters," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 20-25, January.
    5. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    6. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 2002. "The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1415-1451.
    7. Steven D. Levitt, 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1244-1250, September.
    8. Cole, Shawn & Healy, Andrew & Werker, Eric, 2012. "Do voters demand responsive governments? Evidence from Indian disaster relief," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 167-181.
    9. Jean Drèze & Reetika Khera, 2000. "Crime, Gender, and Society in India: Insights from Homicide Data," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 26(2), pages 335-352, June.
    10. Thomas Eisensee & David Strömberg, 2007. "News Droughts, News Floods, and U. S. Disaster Relief," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 693-728.
    11. Khemani, Stuti, 2004. "Political cycles in a developing economy: effect of elections in the Indian States," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 125-154, February.
    12. Durlauf, Steven N. & Navarro, Salvador & Rivers, David A., 2010. "Understanding aggregate crime regressions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 306-317, October.
    13. Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "The Death Toll from Natural Disasters: The Role of Income, Geography, and Institutions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 271-284, May.
    14. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1973. "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 521-565, May-June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chin-Hsien Yu & Jianhong E. Mu & Jinxiu Ding & Bruce A. McCarl, 2017. "Relationships between typhoons, climate and crime rates in Taiwan," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 89(2), pages 871-897, November.
    2. Nekeisha Spencer & Eric Strobl, 2019. "Crime Watch: Hurricanes and Illegal Activities," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(1), pages 318-338, July.
    3. García Hombrados, Jorge, 2020. "The lasting effects of natural disasters on property crime: Evidence from the 2010 Chilean earthquake," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 114-154.
    4. Jorge Garcia Hombrados, 2018. "Empirical essays on development economics," Economics PhD Theses 0318, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    5. Sharma, Smriti, 2015. "Caste-based crimes and economic status: Evidence from India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 204-226.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    2. Eduardo Cavallo & Ilan Noy, 2009. "The Economics of Natural Disasters - A Survey," Working Papers 200919, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    3. Rahman, Muhammad Habibur & Anbarci, Nejat & Ulubaşoğlu, Mehmet A., 2022. "“Storm autocracies”: Islands as natural experiments," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    4. Steven N. Durlauf & Daniel S. Nagin, 2010. "The Deterrent Effect of Imprisonment," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 43-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Choe, Chongwoo & Raschky, Paul A., 2016. "Media, institutions, and government action: Prevention vs. palliation in the time of cholera," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 75-93.
    6. Francesco Bosello & Shouro Dasgupta, 2015. "Development, Climate Change Adaptation, and Maladaptation: Some Econometric Evidence," Working Papers 2015.97, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    7. Tom Kirchmaier & Stephen Machin & Matteo Sandi & Robert Witt, 2020. "Prices, Policing and Policy: The Dynamics of Crime Booms and Busts," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 1040-1077.
    8. Jeroen Klomp, 2020. "Election or Disaster Support?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 205-220, January.
    9. William S. Reece, 2010. "Casinos, Hotels, And Crime," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 28(2), pages 145-161, April.
    10. Povilas Lastauskas & Eirini Tatsi, 2013. "Spatial Nexus in Crime and unemployment in Times of crisis: Evidence from Germany," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1359, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    11. Paolo Buonanno & Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2012. "Police and Crime: Evidence from Dictated Delays in Centralized Police Hiring," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 244, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    12. Natalia Lazzati & Amilcar A. Menichini, 2016. "Hot Spot Policing: A Study of Place‐Based Strategies for Crime Prevention," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(3), pages 893-913, January.
    13. Maurice J. G. Bun & Richard Kelaher & Vasilis Sarafidis & Don Weatherburn, 2020. "Crime, deterrence and punishment revisited," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2303-2333, November.
    14. Magontier, Pierre, 2020. "Does media coverage affect governments' preparation for natural disasters?," MPRA Paper 101291, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Javier Parra Domínguez & Isabel María García Sánchez & Luis Rodríguez Domínguez, 2015. "Relationship between police efficiency and crime rate: a worldwide approach," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 203-223, February.
    16. Kousky, Carolyn, 2014. "Informing climate adaptation: A review of the economic costs of natural disasters," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 576-592.
    17. Marcel Henkel, Eunjee Kwon, Pierre Magontier, 2022. "The Unintended Consequences of Post-Disaster Policies for Spatial Sorting," Diskussionsschriften credresearchpaper37, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED.
    18. Michael M. Bechtel & Jens Hainmueller, 2011. "How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 852-868, October.
    19. Ercio Muñoz S. & Alfredo Pistelli M., 2010. "¿Tienen los Terremotos un Impacto Inflacionario en el Corto Plazo? Evidencia para una Muestra de Países," Notas de Investigación Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 13(2), pages 113-127, April.
    20. Yamamura, Eiji, 2011. "Effect of transparency on changing views regarding nuclear energy before and after Fukushima accident," MPRA Paper 34346, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    crime rate; natural disaster; role of media and elections; developing country;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbt:econwp:10/57. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Albert Yee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decannz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.