Look what the hurricanes just blew in: analyzing the impact of the storm on criminal activities

Abstract

There is no obvious consensus in the literature on the relationship between criminal offenses and natural disasters. Specifically, studies have presented positive, negative, and no impact relationships using either a small number or an aggregation of criminal offenses. Furthermore, majority of studies seem to be focused on single disasters and shorter time periods. This present study fills a gap in the literature by using multiple hurricanes to explore the economic impact of hurricanes on individual criminal activities in Florida with macro level data from 1976 to 2012. More importantly, it highlights how different counties are affected by crime depending on the strength of a hurricane. Additionally, the relatively new generalized difference-in-difference econometric method is used to estimate this impact. I find that hurricanes increases crime per capita in counties that are directly hit, while neighboring counties experience a decline. This study has implications for the allocation of resources and national security in the face of natural disasters.

Keywords:

• Crime
• hurricane
• difference-in-difference

Acknowledgment

I especially thank Solomon Polachek who provided valuable advice throughout the development of the paper. In addition, I thank Alfonso Flores-Lagunes and Carmen Carrion-Flores for their useful comments.

Notes

1. To see hurricane tracks, go to http://csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/#.