Essays on Crime and Social Inequality

This dissertation examines the intersection of crime economics and discrimination through three empirical studies. Each chapter explores how structural inequality, socioeconomic shocks, or institutional responses shape criminal behavior and disparities across demographic groups. Together, the studies provide new evidence on the persistent interaction of crime and discrimination in historical, institutional, and labor market contexts. The first chapter investigates racialized enforcement of drug laws in the U.S. South during the War on Drugs. I develop a model of cultural persistence, linking punitive attitudes toward enslaved Black cotton pickers to intensified law enforcement practices a century later. Using FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data, I estimate the causal impact of historical cotton plantations on racial disparities in drug-related arrests. Counties with higher cotton production in 1860 recorded significantly higher arrest rates of Black offenders after 1982, while white arrest rates remained unchanged. A case study of Arkansas reinforces these results, showing distinct enforcement patterns between neighboring cotton and non-cotton counties. The second chapter analyzes the effect of Ecuador’s 2016 earthquake on crime. The 7.8 magnitude quake caused severe destruction, and I examine its secondary consequences for property and violent crime. Employing a difference-in-differences framework and event study design, I find a sharp but temporary increase in property crimes, alongside a slight decline in violent crimes. Evidence suggests the property crime spike reflects temporal displacement: offenders bringing forward criminal activity in response to the lowered cost of offending after the disaster. The third chapter shifts to labor market inequality in Canada, focusing on occupational task intensity and gender wage gaps. Using Labour Force Survey microdata and adapting task classifications from Autor et al. (2013), I measure the intensity of abstract, routine, contact, and manual tasks. Over the past 25 years, both men and women experienced rising abstract task intensity, with women recently surpassing men. Despite this, wage gaps persist across all task types, particularly in abstract and manual tasks. Working mothers remain underrepresented in high-abstract-task occupations, largely due to long and unpredictable hours, which intersect with the unequal division of childcare. These findings highlight structural mechanisms sustaining gender inequality in Canadian labor markets.

Department dc:contributor.department

Economics

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Sanjabi Malayeri, Kaveh

Advisor dc:contributor.supervisor

• Majumdar, Sumon

• Crime
• Social Inequality

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1974/35012

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:queensu.scholaris.ca:1974/35012