TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Sacerdote,Bruce
AU  - Scheinkman,Jose A.
TI  - Crime and Social Interactions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5026
PY  - 1995
Y2  - February 1995
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5026
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5026.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Bruce Sacerdote
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2121
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: Bruce.I.Sacerdote@dartmouth.edu

Jose A. Scheinkman
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544-1021
Tel: 609/258-4020
Fax: 609/258-0771
E-Mail: joses@princeton.edu
AB  - The high degree of variance of crime rates across space (and across time) is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences (see Quetelet (1835)).  Our empirical work strongly suggests that this variance is not the result of observed or unobserved geographic attributes.  This paper presents a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross- city variance of crime rates.  This model provides a natural index of social interactions which can compare the degree of social interaction across crimes, across geographic 1units and across time.  Our index gives similar results for different data samples and suggests that the amount of social interactions are highest in petty crimes (such as larceny and auto theft), moderate in more serious crimes (assault, burglary and robbery) and almost negligible in murder and rape.  The index of social interactions is also applied to non-criminal choices and we find that there is substantial interaction in schooling choice.
ER  -