engleski

Economic determinants of property crime: case study of Croatia and Slovenia

The purpose of this paper is to examine how certain economic and social conditions affect the property crime rate in Croatia and Slovenia. Theoretical framework implies that besides institutional environment economic conditions also affect the property crime rate. The economic theory of crime is a micro-theory which, postulating that a welfare maximizing individual optimally allocates resources according to relative returns, links socioeconomic conditions to the individual’s relative returns to legal and illegal activity. (Allen, 1996). Economic situation has been understood as one of the factors explaining criminal behaviour for centuries. For our study we chose to compare the situation in Croatia and Slovenia for a period of the last 40 years. Both of these countries were members of former Yugoslavia and were economically more advanced than the rest of the country. During the 1990is transition was conducted differently in these countries and there was a long period of war in Croatia (1991-1995). The proposed econometric model goes as follows: Equation 1: dlog(CPT)=b1+b2dlog(CPT(t-1))+b3d(U(t-1))+b4d(CONV)+ +b5d(YM)+b6(DUMMY)+e Equation 2: dlog(CPT)=b1+b2dlog(CPT(t-1))+b3dlog(GDP(t-1))+ +b4d(CONV)+b5d(YM)+b6(DUMMY)+e CPT Number of committed crimes against property per thousand inhabitants GDP Gross domestic product per capita in real figures, base year 2007 U Unemployment as a percentage of unemployed in the whole population CONV Probability of convictions - number of convicts per thousand committed crimes YM Share of young males in the population DUMMY Dummy variable, takes 1 between years 1993 and 1998, 0 otherwise. .

social causes of crime; economic theory of crime; property

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