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Author: Fone, Zachary S.
Resulting in 3 citations.
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Fone, Zachary S. |
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Essays in Applied Microeconomics: Policy Interventions and Spillovers to Crime Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, 2020 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Crime; Minimum Wage Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The first essay explores the spillover effects to crime from minimum wage increases. A report (from April 2016) by the Council of Economic Advisers advocates raising the minimum wage to deter crime. Minimum wage increases could reduce crime for low-skilled workers through wage gains, but they could also increase crime if they create adverse employment effects (less hours of work and unemployment). Using crime data across three sources over the 1998–2016 period, we find no evidence that increases in the minimum wage reduce crime. Instead, we find that raising the minimum wage increases property crime arrests among those ages 16-to-24. Our estimates suggest that a $15 Federal minimum wage could generate criminal externality costs of nearly $2.4 billion. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fone, Zachary S. Essays in Applied Microeconomics: Policy Interventions and Spillovers to Crime. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire, 2020. |
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Fone, Zachary S. Sabia, Joseph J. Cesur, Resul |
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Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime? NBER Working Paper No. 25647, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019. Also: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25647 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Arrests; Crime; Minimum Wage An April 2016 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) report advocated raising the minimum wage to deter crime. This recommendation rests on the assumption that minimum wage hikes increase the returns to legitimate labor market work while generating minimal adverse employment effects. This study comprehensively assesses the impact of minimum wages on crime using data from the 1998-2016 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). Our results provide no evidence that minimum wage increases reduce crime. Instead, we find that raising the minimum wage increases property crime arrests among those ages 16-to-24, with an estimated elasticity of 0.2. This result is strongest in counties with over 100,000 residents and persists when we use longitudinal data to isolate workers for whom minimum wages bind. Our estimates suggest that a $15 Federal minimum wage could generate criminal externality costs of nearly $2.4 billion. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fone, Zachary S., Joseph J. Sabia and Resul Cesur. "Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime?" NBER Working Paper No. 25647, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2019. |
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Fone, Zachary S. Sabia, Joseph J. Cesur, Resul |
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The Unintended Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on Crime Journal of Public Economics 219 (March 2023): 104780. Also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272722001827 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Arrests; Crime; Job Separation/Loss; Minimum Wage; Uniform Crime Reports The availability of higher-paying jobs for low-skilled individuals has been documented to reduce crime. This study explores the impact of one of the most prominent labor policies designed to provide higher wages for low-skilled workers -- the minimum wage -- on teenage and young adult arrests. Using data from the 1998-2016 Uniform Crime Reports and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that a 1 percent increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 0.2 to 0.3 percent increase in property crime arrests among 16-to-24-year-olds, an effect driven by an increase in larceny-related arrests. The magnitudes of our estimated elasticities suggest that a $15 Federal minimum wage, proposed as part of the Raise the Wage Act, could generate approximately 309,000 additional larcenies. Job loss emerges as an important mechanism to explain our findings, and supplemental analyses of affected workers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 show that this effect is concentrated among workers bound by minimum wage increases. Finally, we find no evidence that minimum wage hikes impact violent crime arrests. |
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Bibliography Citation
Fone, Zachary S., Joseph J. Sabia and Resul Cesur. "The Unintended Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on Crime." Journal of Public Economics 219 (March 2023): 104780.
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