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The socioeconomic and demographic determinants of crime in Iran (a regional panel study)

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Abstract

The raising trend both in violent and property crime are of major concern in Iran. Using a panel data modeling (province wide), the paper provides an econometrics assessment of the relationship between crime against properties and violent crimes as functions of deterrent, social, economic and demographic factors in Iran, in the framework of Becker-Ehrlich crime supply theory. The findings indicate that, although deterrence hypothesis is not confirmed for burglary and assault, it explains the variations of murders and threats. Economic factors play key role in burglary and threat explanation, but they do not affect willful murders, however, Literacy explains both murders and threats. Average of families’ income is explored as a deterrent factor for crime against properties.

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Notes

  1. In situations which vector of \( {\mathbf{X}}_{it} \) consists a lag dependent variable, Arellano and Bond (1991) two stage procedure will be used.

  2. Regressions are estimated by STATA 9.1 software.

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Correspondence to GholamReza Keshavarz Haddad.

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See Tables 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

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Keshavarz Haddad, G., Markazi Moghadam, H. The socioeconomic and demographic determinants of crime in Iran (a regional panel study). Eur J Law Econ 32, 99–114 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-010-9152-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-010-9152-4

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