Jacob, Brian, Lars Lefgren, and Enrico Moretti. 2007. “The Dynamics of Criminal Behavior: Evidence from Weather Shocks.” Journal of Human Resources 42(3): 489–527.
While the persistence of criminal activity is well documented, this may be due to persistence in the unobserved determinants of crime. There are good reasons to believe, however, that there may actually be a negative relationship between crime rates in a particular area due to temporal displacement. We exploit the correlation between weather and crime to examine the short-run dynamics of crime. Using variation in lagged crime rates due to weather shocks, we find that the positive serial correlation is reversed. These findings suggest that the long-run impact of temporary crime-prevention efforts may be smaller than the short-run effects.
Brian Jacob is assistant professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Lars Lefgren is assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University, and Enrico Moretti is associate professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. The authors thank Alberto Abadie, Dick Butler, Joe Doyle, Steve Levitt, Lance Lochner, Erzo Luttmer, Frank McIntyre, Bruce Sacerdote, two referees, and seminar participants at the 2004 NBER Summer Institute, BYU, Wisconsin, Florida, and 2004 AEA Meetings for useful suggestions. Email: Jacob can be contacted at brian_jacob@harvard.edu. Lefgren can be contacted at l-lefgren@byu.edu. Moretti can be contacted at moretti@econ.berkeley.edu. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning January 2008 through December 2010 from Enrico Moretti, 549 Evans Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880, e-mail: Moretti@econ.berkeley.edu.