The effect of reporting errors on the cross-country relationship between inequality and crime

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gibson, John; Kim, Bonggeun
• 署名单位: University of Waikato; Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2007.12.001
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 247-254
• 关键词: crime; INEQUALITY; measurement error; victimization surveys

摘要

This paper analyzes reporting errors in crime data to see how they impact econometric estimates, particularly of the key relationship between inequality and crime. Criminal victimization surveys Of 140,000 respondents in 37 industrial, transition and developing countries are used. Comparing the crimes experienced by these respondents with those reported to the police, nonrandom and mean-reverting errors are apparent. Time-varying factors affect the propensity of victims to report crimes to the police, undermining the use of country-specific fixed effects as a means of dealing with measurement error in official crime data. These errors substantially attenuate both cross-sectional and panel estimates of the partial correlation between inequality and crime. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.