Abstract
In this paper, we study the weather–crime relationship using a unique high-frequency, city-level data set for the USA with 2.4 mil. observations. In contrast to the existing literature often using daily data, we match hourly observations of weather and crime. Our results show that using daily observations overestimates the effect of temperature and underestimates the effect of precipitation on crime and leads to different conclusions about the significance of variables. In addition, we document evidence for a nonlinear relationship between weather variables and crime. Again, results differ greatly between daily and hourly observations.
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Notes
There also exists a literature using laboratory studies not reviewed here. Anderson (2001) provides an excellent overview.
There also exists a related literature on hospital admissions and weather. For example, Rising et al. (2006) use hourly trauma admissions and hourly weather data over six years documenting a positive relationship.
The data provided are for the “primary type” of the crime. We do not know whether, for example, a property crime also has a violent crime component.
Notice that our measure of precipitation cannot distinguish between rain and snow.
We do not find evidence for a unit root in crime types or weather variables using the augmented Dickey–Fuller test.
Notice that the obtained residuals across crime types and cities are free of a systematic daily pattern, supporting that measurement errors should be small (see Fig. 3 in “Appendix”). Further, using the Breusch–Godfrey LM test, we find no autocorrelation in the residuals.
Additionally, the absolute and the squared deviation of temperature from its annual average both have a negative effect on violent crime, which also supports this obtained nonlinearity.
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We would like to thank the editor and two anonymous referees for comments and suggestions that improved the paper. The paper has benefited from comments and suggestions from Chris Barrett, Panle Jia Barwick, David Fielding, C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, Dorian Owen, Eleonora Patacchini, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Nicholas Sanders, Michael Smith, and Brigitte Roth Tran. We thank seminar participants at the Auckland University of Technology, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (ERS), the University of Vermont, Cornell University, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. All remaining errors are our own.
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Baryshnikova, N., Davidson, S. & Wesselbaum, D. Do you feel the heat around the corner? The effect of weather on crime. Empir Econ 63, 179–199 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-021-02130-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-021-02130-3