Anna Bindler, Juliane Hennecke, Nadine Ketel, Lisa Meehan and Gail Pacheco
Abstract: There is a growing amount of evidence that the costs of crime for a society are large. Estimates suggest that the largest share of the costs of crime falls onto the victim side in the form of lives lost and injuries. Still, this can be expected to be an underestimate of the victim-related costs: Many of the victim costs are indirect or intangible of nature and inherently difficult to measure. While a relatively young literature in economics has made progress in understanding and measuring these costs of victimization (Bindler and Ketel, 2022) much is yet unknown. This project’s goal is to add to the knowledge about adverse effects of especially violent crime on victims by concentrating on mental health outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on police data on the universe of all reported crimes as well as detailed information on mental health care provision from various sources using individual-level administrative data from New Zealand. Using an event study design with two-way fixed effects we estimate short- and long-term effects of violent crime victimization on mental health while especially considering heterogeneity with respect to the victim-offender relationship. The results suggest a relatively short-run positive effect of violent crime victimization on mental health treatment as well as a significant differences between effects for familiar and unfamiliar offenders for especially female victims.
Presentation (updated March 2025)
Juliane Hennecke 