The refugee wave to Germany and its impact on crime

Fabian T. Dehos

No 737, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Does refugee migration cause crime? I address this question drawing on recent refugee migration to Germany during the years 2010 to 2015. Based on administrative data records, I add to the literature by disentangling the direct crime impact of asylum seekers and recognized refugees separately. For the group of asylum seekers, I exploit dispersal policies and locational restrictions and find no impact on crime except for migrationspecific offenses. For the group of recognized refugees, who may endogenously move, I use a shift-share instrument and find a positive association between the share of recognized refugees and the overall crime rate, which is driven by non-violent property crimes and frauds. The empirical results prove robust along several robustness checks and are consistent with predictions of the Becker model.

Keywords: refugee migration; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-law, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:737

DOI: 10.4419/86788857

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