Essays on the economics of crime

Inglis, Katharine (2018). Essays on the economics of crime. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis examines topics on the Economics of crime, with a specific focus on the application of Econometrics in studying issues around crime, community safety and policy in England and Wales.
Chapters two and three highlight the gender gap in crime rates and sentencing outcomes and endeavours to identify possible causes. Utilising an ordered logistic regression model and a decomposition method, we find that differing risk preferences between men and women go some way to explaining the difference in offending rates. The analysis in chapter three uses a rich, individual-level dataset for sentencing in England and Wales and, controlling for confounding factors, we find that women are less likely than men to receive a custodial sentence when committing the same crime and receive a significantly shorter sentence when they do.
Chapters four and five analyse key risk factors for “Killed or Seriously Injured” (KSI) road traffic accidents in Norfolk and Suffolk. While chapter four employs an ordered logistic regression model to identify specific risk factors, such as not wearing a seatbelt and poor visibility, chapter five adopts a more novel approach by estimating a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model to identify groups of significant characteristics.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):