Crime and Credit: The Empirical Study of How Crime Affects Credit Ratings of Large US Cities

There is abundant research on crime contributors but not the cost of crime to society. In this article, we fill the gap in the literature by studying how crime affects government entities, specifically, their credit worthiness. Issues with crime may shift government expenditures away from education, welfare, and other crucial areas to law enforcement and may necessitate higher overall expenditures. Crime may also create a risk to investment, negatively affect economic development, contribute to higher poverty and unemployment rates, and to racial injustice. All these may damage credit ratings.