Unemployment and Right-Wing Extremist Crime

Falk, Armin; Kuhn, Andreas; Zweimüller, Josef

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Unemployment and Right-Wing Extremist Crime

CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7467

35 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2009

See all articles by Armin Falk

Armin Falk

University of Bonn - Economic Science Area; briq - Institute on Behavior & Inequality

Andreas Kuhn

University of Zurich; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Josef Zweimüller

University of Zurich - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

There are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 2009

Abstract

It is frequently argued that unemployment plays a crucial role for the occurrence of right-wing extremist crimes. We empirically test this hypothesis using data from Germany. We find that right-wing criminal activities occur more frequently when unemployment is high. The big difference in right-wing crime between East and West German states can mostly be attributed to differences in unemployment. This finding reinforces the importance of unemployment as an explanatory factor for right-wing crime and questions explanations based solely on the different socialization in former communist East Germany and the liberal West German states.

Keywords: cost of unemployment, Hate crime, right-wing extremism, unemployment

JEL Classification: J15, J69, K42

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Falk, Armin and Kuhn, Andreas and Zweimueller, Josef, Unemployment and Right-Wing Extremist Crime (September 2009). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP7467, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1484500