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.     

Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean

Land grabbing has gained momentum in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade. The phenomenon has taken different forms and character as compared to processes that occur in other regions of the world, especially Africa. It puts into question some of the assumptions in the emerging literature on land grabbing, suggesting these are too food-centered/too food crisis-centered, too land-centred, too centred on new global food regime players – China, South Korea, Gulf States and India – and too centred on Africa. There are four key mechanisms through which land grabbing in Latin American and the Caribbean has been carried out: food security initiatives, energy/fuel security ventures, other climate change mitigation strategies, and recent demands for resources from newer hubs of global capital. The hallmark of land grabbing in the region is its intra-regional character: the key investors are (Trans-)Latin American companies, often in alliance with international capital and the central state. Initial evidence suggests that recent land investments have consolidated the earlier trend away from (re)distributive land policies in most countries in the region, and are likely to result in widespread reconcentration of land and capital.     

Postretrenchment Politics: Policy Feedback in Chile's Health and Pension Reforms

Through a comparison of three periods of health and pension reform in Chile, this article develops an explanation for the incremental form of social policy change that some Latin American nations have witnessed in recent years, despite the dramatic rise of left governments. It describes “postretrenchment politics,” which constitutes a realignment in the way politics plays out in countries that have undergone social policy retrenchment. In postretrenchment politics, the strengthened position of private business interests, combined with political learning legacies and lock‐in effects generated by reforms, results in incremental political change, despite renewed efforts by left parties to address inequality. Global capital also plays an important contextual role, and may influence postretrenchment politics. In postretrenchment politics, newly reformed systems may achieve greater equity, but they do so in fragmented form.