'Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis' and 'Crime and the City'

Crime is unevenly distributed across space and tends to be concentrated in poor areas. Recent theoretical advances show that social interactions and peer effects can explain this pattern because of contagion effects and social multipliers. An individual is more likely to commit crime if his or her peers commit crime than if they do not. Recent empirical findings suggest that, indeed, social interactions and networks are key to understand criminal behaviour in cities.