Impatience and crime. Evidence from the NLSY97

We empirically test the relationship between crime and impatience at the individual level exploiting data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). Besides providing information on both violent and property crimes, NLSY97 allows to observe dierent behaviors sharing impatience as...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Authors Basiglio, Stefania, esta, Alessandra, Turati, Gilberto
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2021
Subjects
Crime
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Summary:We empirically test the relationship between crime and impatience at the individual level exploiting data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). Besides providing information on both violent and property crimes, NLSY97 allows to observe dierent behaviors sharing impatience as a common latent factor. We use factor analysis to extract this common factor as a measure for impatience. Estimates from a Logit model suggest a positive association between impatience and crime. This relationship differs across genders: impatience matters for both violent and property crimes for women, while it affects only violent crimes for men. The result is robust to dierent specications of the factor analysis and to controls for risk preferences. Our results bring support to policies aimed at inuencing individual time preferences as an indirect way to combat crime.