New Findings about Economic Roots of Crimes Harmful to Public Security: Case Study of Records of Theft in Iran

Security is one of the most important public goods in each economy that its existence is a necessary condition for economic growth and development process. Theft is one of the crimes leading to decreased sense of security in society. In order to reduce the amount of theft, it is necessary to identify roots of this crime. The economic factors are one of the most roots of theft. The goal of this paper is to investigate the economic roots of theft in Iran during the 1984-2014 period.
For this purpose, using regression analysis, we studied about the impacts of economic factors on the per capita theft.
The estimation results of the research model indicate that the variables of per capita income and income inequality have a nonlinear and threshold impact on the per capita theft. That is to say that these variables to a certain degree of income and income distribution inequality are because of low level of income and high inequality in income, have significant positive impacts on the per capita theft, but after crossing the threshold levels of per capita and Income distribution inequality and achieveing better per capita income and income distribution, these variables have significant negative impacts on the per capita theft. Also, inflation and unemployment rates have significant positive impact on the per capita theft in the society.