Determinants of Property Crime in IranWith Emphasis on Business Cycles and Social Damages

Crime data in Iran, especially property ‎crime, have an increasing trend since the late 2000s. The ‎purpose of this study is analysis of economic and social factors affecting crime based on rational choice ‎and social structure theories. Due to the limitation of crime data, robbery is considered as one of ‎the most important forms of property crime. The main difference of this study with previous ‎empirical studies is to investigate the effect of social variables such as prevalence rates of ‎addiction, divorce and education, as well as the effect of business cycles and government ‎spending on crime rates. The provincial panel data method was used to estimate the research ‎model over the period 2008-2016. ‎The results showed that the rate of robbery has a negative and significant relationship with ‎economic variables such as per capita income and a positive and significant relationship with ‎inflation and poverty and youth unemployment. Also, counter-cyclical behavior of robbery in ‎the country is confirmed. Other findings of the study show a negative and significant ‎relationship between the rate of robbery and the ratio of government expenditure to GDP. Also, ‎the negative relationship of the composite index of unemployment rate and education indicates ‎the dominant effect of education in crime debate. The results of the study recognize the positive and ‎significant relationship between the prevalence rate of addiction and divorce rate with robbery. Addiction reduces the opportunity to participate in the legal labor market, and divorce can have severe social and psychological consequences.