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Social Disruption: Explorations on the Pattern of Criminal and Violent Occurrences in Response to Macroeconomic Conditions

Synopsis

This book inspects the interdependencies among social disruption signals and their relationship to economic conditions as emerging from available Portuguese time series. Comparisons with international cross-section evidence are provided. Three types of innovations are presented: firstly, it searches for interactions – and common causes – between indicators of general aggressiveness or pro-activity that include accident, suicide, divorce rates and armed forces along with criminality records. Secondly, it illustrates theoretical applications of principal components: in time series filtering; in cross-correlation and corresponding significance-level probabilities analysis; in the treatment of missing cases. Finally, estimators based on observational replicability of second moments are proposed.

Introduction

The Data: Available Social Distress Indicators

1.1. Cross-Section: International Indicators

1.2. Time Series: Portugal

Social Disruption Indicators: Common Factor and Trend Analysis

2.1. Principal Components – a Brief Overview and Some Extensions

2.2. Cross-Section Analysis: International Indicators

2.3. Time Series Evidence: Portugal

Linear Regressions and The Explanation of Individual Series

3.1. Introduction: Missing Observations and Replicated Moment Estimation

3.2. Divorces and Suicides

3.3. Accidents: Total, Fatal; Labor and Road, Total Deaths by External Causes

3.4. Crime and Justice: Reported Crimes, Criminal Convictions

3.5. Law Enforcement: Prison Inmates

3.6. Armed Forces

3.7. Strike Activity

The Four Knights of the Apocalypse: Determinants of Each Principal Component

4.1. System-Wide Principal Components – A Theoretical Note

4.2. Estimation: the Explanatory Set, Impact on the Dependent Set and Correlation Analysis

The Hand of Justice: Conviction Rates, Armed Forces and Exogeneity Tests

Summary and Conclusions

Appendix A

Appendix B

References

About Author

Dr. Ana Paula Martins studied Economics in Lisbon at Catholic University of Portugal (BA 1982) and concluded a Ph.D. in New York at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Columbia University (1987). She has taught at both schools and at New University of Lisbon graduate and undergraduate courses. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the Catholic University of Portugal, where she has been teaching Labor Economics and Econometrics. She has published theoretical and applied research articles in Labor Economics and Quantitative Methods in refereed academic journals, and also been presenter and participant in numerous international scientific Conferences on various fields. She was a member of the Catholic University Library Council representing the Economics field.