Unemployment and crime: the role of apprehension

An increase in the unemployment rate decreases the opportunity cost of crime and increases the crime rate according to standard microeconomics models. However, a large body of empirical research has shown that an increase in unemployment may increase or decrease crime. By incorporating the return to crime into standard economic models, this paper shows that an increase in unemployment, as in recessions, decreases the opportunity cost of crime and the return to crime as well. As a result, the effect of unemployment on crime is ambiguous and depends on the apprehension rate. An increase in the unemployment rate tends to decrease the crime rate at lower apprehension rates, but to increase it at higher apprehension rates. An increase in the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits does not necessarily reduce the crime rate, and the effect of more generous unemployment insurance on crime depends again on the apprehension rate.     

Regional growth linkages from agriculture

Pioneering research on downstream linkages from agriculture is said to demonstrate that consumption links rather than production links are the main source of indrect growth effects, that these consumption links take the form of labour‐intensive goods and services produced locally, and that the largest farm enterprises are most locally multiplicative of activities mopping up surplus rural labour. This article has two purposes. First, the methodologies, assumptions and data base for the quantification of the local and non‐local regional multiplier effects from agricultural development are examined. Second, the contradictory interpretations for agricultural policy which have arisen from these exercises of quantification are discussed and an attempt made to explain their bases.