Citation

Discussion Paper Details

Please find the details for DP13120 in an easy to copy and paste format below:

Full Details | Bibliographic Reference

Full Details

Title: Leaders in Juvenile Crime

Author(s): Carlos D�az, Eleonora Patacchini, Thierry Verdier and Yves Zenou

Publication Date: August 2018

Keyword(s): closeness centrality, Crime leaders, criminal decision and social distance

Programme Area(s): Public Economics

Abstract: This paper presents a new theory of crime where leaders transmit a crime technology and act as a role model for other criminals. We show that, in equilibrium, an individual's crime effort and crime decisions depend on the geodesic distance to the leader in his or her network of social contacts. By using data on friendship networks among U.S. high-school students, we structurally estimate the model and find evidence supporting its predictions. In particular, by using a definition of a criminal leader that is exogenous to the network formation of friendship links, we find that the longer is the distance to the leader, the lower is the criminal activity of the delinquents and the less likely they are to become criminals. This result highlights the importance of the closeness centrality of the leaders in explaining criminal behaviors. We finally perform a counterfactual experiment that reveals that a policy that removes all criminal leaders from a school can, on average, reduce criminal activity by about 20% and the individual probability of becoming a criminal by 10%.

For full details and related downloads, please visit: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13120

Bibliographic Reference

D�az, C, Patacchini, E, Verdier, T and Zenou, Y. 2018. 'Leaders in Juvenile Crime'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13120