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An economic model of criminal activity, Derek Deadman and David Pyle measurement error in economic models of crime, Derek Deadman, Stephen Pudney and David Pyle an investigation into quarterly crime and its relationship to the economy, Denise Osborn the relationship between economic conditions and property crime - evidence for the United States, Amor Diez-Ticio imprisonment versus fines - a theoretical perspective, Ingolf Dittman the victims of property crime, Ziggy MacDonald and Stephen Pudney the under-reporting of crime, Ziggy MacDonald the social and economic determinants of illicit drug use, Ziggy MacDonald the labour market consequences of illicit drug use, Ziggy MacDonald and Stephen Pudney income tax evasion - a theoretical analysis, Ali al-Nowaihi and David Pyle income tax evasion - an experimental approach, Stephen Pudney, David Pyle and Tolga Saruc.

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the WinEcon computer-based learning (CBL) software released into the academic community in September 1995. The focus of the paper is the impact of continued and directed WinEcon use on students’ learning as measured by their examination results. The subjects of the study were the 240 Leicester University students enrolled on the 1995/96 introductory microeconomics course who were categorised by their use of WinEcon. Using traditional regression and decomposition techniques, we show that directed use of WinEcon can enhance exam performance by a small but significant proportion, enough to improve the pass rate of the overall course.

In this paper we consider the reasons why the general level of recorded crime has been falling in the United States and many European countries in the last ten years. We review the time-series statistical evidence on the determinants of crime, and investigate the extent to which these determinants are matched with survey evidence on the offending behaviour of young people. This survey evidence is particularly revealing on the perceptions of young people to various sorts of deterrents, and it also highlights a strong association between illicit drug use and involvement in crime.

In this paper we consider the data used by economists to estimate economic models of crime. We discuss the main sources of Official Crime Statistics in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and raise questions about the reliability of these data for estimation and forecasting purposes. In particular, we focus on the disparity between crime rates suggested by victimisation surveys and the rates suggested by Official Statistics, and show that this is primarily a consequence of under-reporting by victims and under-recording by the police. We conclude our analysis by considering the factors that influence the under-reporting of crime.

In this paper, we use data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) to examine the effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes. We find very little evidence to support any relationship between drug use, hard or soft, and occupational attainment. However, we find compelling evidence to suggest that drug use, particularly the use of opiates, cocaine and crack cocaine, is associated with an increased risk of unemployment, regardless of age or gender.

There is considerable debate in the literature about the relationship between the economic cycle and property crime. Much of the debate centres on the statistical methods used to explore the importance of various economics factors in determining crime. This study argues that more attention should be paid to the process that generates the data used in this work. Findings indicate that the reporting rate for property crime is sensitive to economic conditions, but in the opposite direction to the sensitivity of crime itself. This suggests a disparity between the true rate of crime and the measured crime rate, which increases during periods of economic downturn.

The control of psychoactive substances presents a serious concern for policy makers who must take into account the allocation of scarce public resources resulting from their interventions. Much of the debate in this respect is carried out within an informational vacuum. This paper presents an analysis of the survey data currently available to policy makers. We consider the British Crime Survey (BCS) which is the primary source of UK drug use information and observe serious limitations to what it can provide. We find that it does not allow us to effectively analyse the problem of escalating drug use, nor can we identify the point of initiation into the drugs market or the duration of use. We recommend that some of these observational problems could be overcome if the BCS drug questions were presented in the reverse order. However, based on the three drug use questions currently presented in the BCS, we offer an analysis of past and present drug use in terms of socio-economic factors that are associated with use at the extensive margin.

In this paper, we use data from the Health Survey of England to show that problem drinking is negatively and significantly associated with the probability of being in work, once the endogenous relationship between these outcomes is accounted for. Being a problem drinker leads to a substantial reduction in the probability of working by between 7 and 31%, the former figure being roughly equivalent to the positive effect of having a degree relative to no qualifications in our data. This finding is robust to a variety of identifying restrictions and definitions of problem drinking. Moreover, we find that problem drinking defined by the observed psychological and physical symptoms of alcohol is an important predictor of employment, and allows for the fact that individuals differ in their tolerance or susceptibility to alcohol. Our results suggest that there may be important labour market benefits from public health policies aimed at the prevention and treatment of problem drinking.

We use data from the New England and Wales Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme to assess the validity of self-report measures of illicit drug use and to evaluate the use of alternative drug testing strategies within survey enquiries. Our analysis of the NEW-ADAM data reveals that bio-assay measurements of drug use tend not to be very sensitive to the cut-off levels selected for screening tests, a result that holds for cannabis, cocaine and opiates. We also show that a self-reported history of previous drug use can be used as a way of identifying individuals who are potential under-reporters of current drug use. This suggests a selective drug testing strategy which can reduce dramatically the cost of drug testing without comprising the accuracy of measurements of illicit drug use.

In this paper the employment of Scottish and English self- reporting drug users is considered using data drawn from the Scottish and British Crime Surveys. Univariate and bivariate estimates of the probability of being employed reveal a robustly negative and statistically significant association between a number of measures of drug use and current employment. These results hold for separate samples of Scottish and English respondents, and confirm recent findings for the United States. We also highlight the paucity of data available for this type of research, particularly for Scotland, and suggest that this ought to be a serious concern for policy makers charged with implementing and monitoring polices aimed at tackling drugs misuse and its cost to society.

In this study we provide evidence on the effect of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment in England. To do this we use samples of employees from the Health Survey for England between 1992 and 1996. We find that, owing to the endogenous nature of alcohol consumption, OLS estimates may provide a biased picture of the impact of alcohol consumption on occupational attainment. Using various sets of instrumental variables, we find positive and significant returns to moderate levels of drinking for male and female employees which drop off rapidly as consumption increases.

We use data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) to analyse the relationship between illicit drug use and labour market outcomes for a sample of men and women aged 16–25. In using these data we highlight a serious design flaw in the BCS questionnaire structure that presents a serious barrier to statistical modelling of drug use at the individual level. We propose a simple way of overcoming this problem and proceed to estimate a model of occupational attainment jointly determined with unemployment and current drug use, conditional on past drug use. Separating the commonly abused drugs into a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ category, we find that past hard drug use has a significant positive association with current unemployment, but find no significant association between past hard or soft drug use and occupational attainment. We also find no significant association between current drug use and attainment, although we observe that current drug use is associated with current unemployment.

SUMMARY We use the British Crime Survey (BCS) to analyse the demand for illicit drugs and the implications of drug use for the probability of subsequent unemployment. We demonstrate that the BCS questionnaire has a serious design flaw for this purpose, and we propose some simple modifications. We also develop a modelling technique that is suitable for existing BCS data and apply it to the 1994 and 1996 samples. We find evidence that soft drug use is associated with a greatly increased probability of later hard drug use and that past drug use is associated with increased probabilities of unemployment.

This study, using data from the British Crime Survey (BCS), examines the effect of drug use on occupational achievement. It starts by attempting to overcome the identification problem that results from the limited set of drug use questions presented in the BCS. Taking this into account, and allowing for the endogeneity of drug use in equations for unemployment and labour market outcomes, that a mild positive association with ‘soft’ drugs and occupational achievement is observed that diminishes with age. This relationship holds for males but not for females. In contrast, it is also found that past use of ‘hard’ drugs significantly increases the likelihood of current unemployment, although it appears to be unrelated to occupational success, conditional on achieving employment.

This paper presents a review of the recent economics literature in the area of illicit drug use. Particular attention is paid to the economics of addiction and the rational addiction model, the welfare economics framework for analysing the social costs of drug use, and the attempts that have been made by economists to evaluate recent or proposed policy interventions. A dominant theme in this review is the problem of poor data availability. This is particularly true when it comes to implementing the Rational Addiction model, but it is also apparent in the literature on estimating the costs of illicit drug use to society as a whole. One of the main conclusions of this review is that until recently public policy has not been particularly influenced by research carried out by economists. It is not clear whether this is because economists have had to grapple with inadequate data, and hence their conclusions are couched in uncertainty, or whether it is because drugs researchers have assumed a very limited role for economists in their analysis.

SummaryWe consider the association between victimization and offending behaviour by using data from the Youth Lifestyles Survey. We consider the effect of violent and non-violent offending on the probability of being a victim of violent and non-violent crime and find a positive association between these by using univariate probit estimates. However, taking into account the endog- enous nature of offending and victimization via a bivariate probit model, we find that univariate estimates understate the association. We suggest that policy recommendations should only be informed by the bivariate analysis of the association between offending and victimization.