Essays on the economics of crime and policing

In this thesis we contribute to the debate on how economic incentives affect crime. As shown by theoretical models, deteriorating labour market opportunities can shift an individual’s incentives to engage in legitimate or illegitimate acts. In the first chapter, using a panel data analysis, we empirically test the relationship between U.S. business cycles and burglary rates. We find that increasing benefits is more effective at reducing countercyclical crime than providing unemployment support for an extended period. The second chapter utilises a novel measure of income inequality and two measures to capture the incentives of the unemployed and low-income earners in a dynamic panel-data model to evaluate their effect on different types of crime in England and Wales. The findings strongly support the pervasive relationship between economic indicators and property crime, both in short- and long-run. Finally, the third chapter builds a predictive solvability model by examining how the presence and absence of factors, during the preliminary phase of the investigation, determine case solvability of fraud and cybercrime. The predictive capabilities of the model are assessed on an external validation sample and the findings show a high degree of accuracy