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Title: When Crime No Longer Pays: A Dynamic Economic Analysis of Crime Desistance Decisions
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Pezzin, Liliana E. |
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When Crime No Longer Pays: A Dynamic Economic Analysis of Crime Desistance Decisions Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 1992 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning Keyword(s): Crime; Illegal Activities; Income; Life Cycle Research; Modeling, Logit; Modeling, Probit; Punishment, Criminal This paper presents a dynamic stochastic model of sequential search and match evaluation used to explain the reasons for and timing of the decision to terminate a criminal career. It emphasizes that the life-cycle of criminal involvement is generated in an uncertain environment and departs from the existing literature by positing that career profile choices and desistance decisions depend critically on general and match-specific factors affecting the life-cycle pattern of net legal and illegal rewards. The study conceptually solves the implied optimal desistance strategy problem for the individual criminal, derives the behavioral implications of this solution for the empirical work and estimates the parameters of the model using individual National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. To consistently implement the model, selectivity-corrected imputations of criminal and legal market earnings are first obtained, via a multinomial logit-OLS and a probit-OLS two-stage estimation method, respectively, and then substituted in the structural desistance probability logit equation. Estimation results strongly support the theoretical prediction of a negative relation between the option value of retaining a criminal career and desistance decisions. More specifically, the effects of current and future expected criminal earnings are shown to be negative, substantial and statistically significant in determining desistance probabilities. Retiring behavior is also significantly responsive to variables measuring personal costs of punishment and the availability and attractiveness of a legal income-generating activity in ways consistent with theoretical expectations. |
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Bibliography Citation
Pezzin, Liliana E. When Crime No Longer Pays: A Dynamic Economic Analysis of Crime Desistance Decisions. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 1992. |