A partner in crime : assortative matching and bias in the crime market

Abstract

I identify a discriminatory bias in partnership formation within the property crime mar- ket in the United States. Theoretically, the prisoner's dilemma creates an incentive for a criminal to form a partnership with a counterpart with the same probability of success, re- sulting in an equilibrium pattern of positive assortative matching. Using individual matched report-arrest data from the National Incident Based Reporting System and a novel empiri- cal strategy, I pinpoint matches where the underlying probability of success of two partners differ. This difference in probability is correlated with observable characteristics, which could be evidence for discrimination and search frictions. I find patterns consistent with discrimination in male-female partnerships and patterns consistent with search frictions in black-white matches. In particular, females in a male-female partnership are more likely to evade law-enforcement than males, even though on average males are more successful as a group. This results is robust to controlling for the criminal earnings, individual criminal offenses and market characteristics. Furthermore, these patterns are found also in criminal groups of a size bigger than 2. The result could be either due to pre-crime marital matching or discrimination.