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Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens
Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens
Matthew Freedman
We exploit a sudden shock to demand for a subset of low-wage workers generated by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program in San Antonio, Texas to identify the effects of localized economic development on crime. We use a difference-in-difference methodology that takes advantage of variation in BRAC’s impact over time and across neighborhoods. We find that appropriative criminal behavior increases in neighborhoods where a fraction of residents experienced increases in earnings. This effect is driven by residents who were unlikely to be BRAC beneficiaries, implying that criminal opportunities are important in explaining patterns of crime.
Forthcoming in the …