上海市就业市场状况与城市犯罪的空间计量分析

基于2008年上海市经济普查数据和城市犯罪数据,改变以往学者以失业率描述就业市场状况的做法,构建就业市场状况指数,并将其扩展到所有行业;同时,构建空间计量模型,研究上海市就业市场状况与刑事犯罪率之间关系,结果表明:1)就业市场状况对刑事犯罪率影响显著,不同行业的影响并不相同;其中,批发零售业、租赁和商业服务业、居民服务和其他服务业、公共管理和社会组织业就业的集中会引发犯罪活动的发生。2)空间计量模型在解释就业市场状况与刑事犯罪率之间关系时,计量效果良好。3)"空间效应"是影响刑事犯罪率的重要因素,其影响来自"空间邻近效应"和"空间误差效应"。

A SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS ON LOCAL LABOR MARKET AND CRIME IN SHANGHAI

Recognizing the importance of employment, many criminologists have argued that increased unemployment leads to increase of crime. The researches on relationship between unemployment and crime rate treat job as homogeneous in terms of income and stability. The recent studies explore the employment quality influences crime. Researchers have conducted a variety of studies examining the relationship of wages to crime. Some of the findings indicate that increased wages can contribute the lower crime rate. To under how "job market quality" influences crime, researchers define "job marker quality" in a variety of ways. This paper uses the natural logarithm of ratio of the percentage of the civilian that is employed in each industry to represent the "job marker quality". Based-on economic census data and crime data of Shanghai in 2008, the relationship between labor market quality and criminal crime rate estimated by spatial econometric models, the results are shown as follows. First, low-quality labor markets do strong effect to the criminal crime rate. Individual's willingness to engage in criminal activities can be ranked according to their labor force status. The theory behind such a connection is simple:a decline in the wage offer increases the relative payoff of criminal activity thus inducing workers to substitute away from the legal sector towards the illegal sector. The people who work in low-quality industries more likely have a regular pattern of routine activities due as they commute to and from work, and more likely to have earned income, which may produce an income effect by increasing the need to seek additional source of income in possibly less desirable and more dangerous ways. Second, "spatial effects" explain an important component of crime in Shanghai. The "spatial effects" include "spatial lag effect" and "spatial error effect". Third, the spatial econometric model is a good fit model for studying the criminal crime rate and labor market quality.