Does Social Capital Reduce Crime?
Does Social Capital Reduce Crime?
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DOI：
10.1086/595698
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发表时间：
2009-02-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Vanin, Paolo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Buonanno, Paolo;Montolio, Daniel;Vanin, Paolo
我们调查了公民规范和关联网络对犯罪率的影响。公民规范可能会给犯罪行为附加罪恶感和羞耻感，从而增加其机会成本。关联网络可能会增加非犯罪活动的回报，提高被发现的可能性，但它们也可能成为犯罪分子的沟通渠道，并可能为犯罪活动提供官方掩护。这些效应的实证评估存在严重的内生性、遗漏变量、测量误差和空间相关性问题。意大利在社会和经济特征上的巨大差异，政策和制度上的同质性，以及其各地区社会资本历史数据的可用性，使我们能够尽量减少前两个问题。为了解决后两个问题，我们使用报告率调整犯罪率和估计空间滞后模型。我们发现，公民规范和协会网络对意大利各省的财产犯罪都有负面和显著的影响。
We investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates. Civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behavior, thus increasing its opportunity cost. Associational networks may increase returns to noncriminal activities and raise detection probabilities, but they may also work as communication channels for criminals and may offer official cover to criminal activities. The empirical assessment of these effects poses serious problems of endogeneity, omitted variables, measurement error, and spatial correlation. Italy's great variance in social and economic characteristics, its homogeneity in policies and institutions, and the availability of historical data on social capital in its regions allow us to minimize the first two problems. To tackle the last two problems, we use report-rate-adjusted crime rates and estimate a spatial lag model. We find that both civic norms and associational networks have a negative and significant effect on property crimes across Italian provinces.