Are their collar still white? White-collar crime: Evidence from Paraguay 2000-2016

Schneider, Andreas (2018): Are their collar still white? White-collar crime: Evidence from Paraguay 2000-2016. Published in: Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences , Vol. 11, No. 2 (May 2018): pp. 116-137.

Abstract

This research paper contributes to the literature of white-collar crime by using a unique data set of aggregated monthly white-collar crime incidents for Paraguay. The time series includes data from 2000–2016. Furthermore, a seasonal ARIMA model is presented to model the data. Findings show that white-collar crime has increased more than 800 percent and crime rate more than 640 percent respectively, with a peak in 2015. Fraud and violation of trust contribute to over 91 percent of aggregated white-collar crime. A prediction for 2017 indicates a slight decrease of 5.7 percent compared to 2016.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: White-collar crime, Paraguay, ARIMA models, Time series, Model selection, Akaike weights
• Subjects: K - Law and Economics > K0 - General > K00 - General

References

Agnew, Robert (1992). “Foundation for a general strain theory of crime and delinquency.” Criminology, 30 (1): 47-87.

Agnew, Robert (2001). “Building on the foundation of general strain theory: Specifying the types of strain most likely to lead to crime and delinquency." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38 (4):319-361.

Akaike, Hirotugu (1973). Information Theory and an Extension of the Maximum Likelihood Principle. In: B. N. Petrov, & F. Csaki (Eds.),Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Information Theory (pp. 267-281). Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.

Akerlof, George A., and Paul M. Romer (1993). “Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for Profit.” In: Brainard, W., and Perry, G.(Eds.), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2: 1-73.

Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (2016). Report to the nations on occupational fraud and abuse. Retrieved May 31, 2017 from https://www.acfe.com/rttn2016/docs/2016-report-to-the-nations.pdf.

Auriol, Emmanuelle, Stephane Straub, and Thomas Flochel (2016). “Public Procurement and rent-seeking: The case of Paraguay.” World Development, 77: 395-407.

Banerjee, Abhijit V. (1992). “A simple model of herd behavior.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107 (3): 797-817.

Barassi, Marco R., and Ying Zhou (2012). “The effect of corruption on FDI: A parametric and non-parametric analysis.” European Journal of Political Economy, 28 (3): 302-312. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2012.01.001.

Barnett, Cynthia (n. d.). The Measurement of White-Collar Crime using Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Data. Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Information Services Division. Retrieved October 10, 2017 from https://ucr.fbi.gov/nibrs/nibrs_wcc.pdf.

Becker, Gary S. (1968). “Crime and Punishment: An economic approach.” The Journal of Political Economy, 76 (2): 169-217.

Black, William K. (2010). Wall St. fraud and fiduciary responsibilities: Can jail time serves as an adequate deterrent for willful violations? Testimony of William K. Black before the U.S. Senate, Committee on the judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, Retrieved October 18, 2017 from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract.id=1607045.

Blickle, Gerhard, Alexander Schlegel, Pantaleon Fassbender, and Uwe Klein (2006). “Some personality correlates of business white-collar crime.” Applied Psychology: An International Review, 55 (2): 220-233.

Box, George Edward Pelham, and David A Pierce (1970). “Distribution of residual autocorrelations in autoregressive-integrated moving average time series models.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 65 (332): 1509-1526. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080%2F01621459.1970.10481180.

Bramness, Jorgen G., Frederik A. Walby, Gunnar Morken, and Jo Roislien (2015). “Analyzing seasonal variations in suicide with Fourier Poisson time-series regression: A registry-based study from Norway, 1969-2007.” American Journal of Epidemiology, 182, (3): 244-254. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwv064.

Brody, Richard G., and Kent A. Kiehl (2010). “From white-collar crime to red-collar crime.” Journal of Financial Crime, 17 (3): 351-364. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1108/13590791011056318.

Bucy, Pamela H., Elizabeth P. Formby, Marc S. Raspanti, and Kathryn E. Rooney (2008). “Why do they do it? The Motives, mores, and character of white collar criminals.” St. Johns Law Review, 82 (2): 401-572.

Burnham, Kenneth P., and David R. Anderson (2004). “Multimodel inference: Understanding AIC and BIC in model selection.” Sociological Methods Research, 33: 261-304. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124104268644.

Canova, Fabio, and Bruce E. Hansen (1995). “Are seasonal patterns constant over time? A test for seasonal stability.” Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 13 (3): 237-252.

Cassel, Elaine, and Douglas A. Bernstein (2015). Criminal Behavior. 2nd Edition. London and New York: Routledge.

Corcoran, Katie E., Blaine Robbins, and David Pettinicchio (2012). “Religion and the acceptability of white-collar crime: A cross national analysis.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51 (3): 542-567.

Detotto, Claudio, and Edoardo Otranto (2010). “Does crime effect economic growth?” Kyklos, 63 (3): 330-345. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6435.2010.00477.x.

Dickey, David A., and Wayne A. Fuller (1979). “Distributions of the estimators for autoregressive time series with a unit root.” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74 (366): 427-431.

Dickey, David A., and Wayne A. Fuller (1981). “Likelihood ratio statistics for autoregressive time series with a unit root.” Econometrica, 49 (4): 1057-1072.

Durkheim, Emile (1982). In: Steven Lukes (Ed.), The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: The Free Press.

Ehrlich, Isaac (1973). “Participation in illegitimate activities: A theoretical and empirical investigation.” The Journal of Political Economy, 81 (3): 521-565.

Ehrlich, Isaac (1996). “Crime, punishment and the market of offenses.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10 (1): 43-67.

Friedrichs, David O. (2010). Trusted criminals. White collar crime in contemporary society. 4th Edition. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Ganzini, Linda, Bentson McFarland, and Joseph Bloom (1990). “Victims of fraud: Comparing victims of white collar crime and violent crime.” The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 18 (1): 55–63.

Granger, Clive W. J. (1979). “Seasonality: Causation, interpretation, and implications.” In Seasonal analysis of economic time series, edited by Arnold Zellner, 33-56. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Guillén, Stella. (2011). Crisis financiera internacional. Observatorio de Economía Internacional, 1-7.

Henry, Stuart, and Danielle McGurrin (2013). “Special Issue: White collar crime.” Western Criminology Review, 14 (2): 1-2.

Hirschi, Travis, and Michael Gottfredson (1983). “Age and the explanation of crime.” The American Journal of Sociology, 89 (3): 552-584.

Javorcik, Beata S., and Shang-Jin Wei (2009). “Corruption and cross border investment in emerging markets: Firm-level evidence.” Journal of International Money and Finance, 28: 605-624.

Kwiatkowski, Denis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Peter Schmidt, and Yongcheol Shin (1992). “Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root. How sure are we that economic times series have a unit root?” Journal of Econometrics, 54: 159-178.

Ljung, Greta M., and George Edward Pelham Box (1978). “On a measure of lack of fit in time series models.” Biometrika, 65 (2): 297-303.

Malone, Mary Fran T. (2010). “The verdict is in: The impact of crime on public trust in Central American justice systems.” Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2 (3): 99-128.

Mauro, Paolo. 1995. “Corruption and Growth.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110 (3): 681-712.

McGurrin, Danielle, Melissa Jarrell, Amber Jahn, and Brandy Cochrane (2013). “White collar crime representation in the criminological literature revisited, 2001-2010.” Western Criminology Review, 14 (2): 3-19.

Méndez, Fabio, and Facundo Sepúlveda (2006). “Corruption, growth and political regimes: Cross country evidence.” European Journal of Political Economy, 22: 82–98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2005.04.005.

Newman, Donald J. (1958). “White-collar crime.” Law and Contemporary Problems, 23 (4): 735-753.

O’Brien, Connie (2017). “Can pre-employment tests identify white collar criminals and reduce fraud risk in your organization?” Journal of Forensic and Investigative Accounting, 9(1): 621-636.

Payne, B. K. (2016). White collar crime: the essentials. 2nd Edition. Singapore: Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Pridmore, Saxby, and Anil Reddy (2012). “Financial loss and suicide.” The Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, 19(2): 74–76.

Schwert, William (1989). “Test for unit roots: A Monte Carlo investigation.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 7(2): 147-159.

Seligson, Mitchell A. (2006). “The measurement and impact of corruption victimization: Survey evidence from Latin America.” World Development, 34 (2): 381-404. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.03.012.

Shapiro, Susan P. (1980). “Thinking about white collar crime: Matters of conceptualization and research.” Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.

Shumway, Robert H., and David S. Stoffer (2011). Time Series Analysis and its Applications. With R Examples. Third Edition. New York: Springer.

Sutherland, Edwin H. (1940). “White collar criminality.” American Sociological Review, 5 (1): 1-12.

Transparency International (2017a). Corruption Perceptions Index 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2017 from https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publication/corruption_perceptions_index_2016.

Transparency International (2017b). People and Corruption: Latin America and the Caribbean – Global Corruption Barometer. Retrieved October 10, 2017 from https://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/publications.

Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan, and Simon Farrell (2004). “AIC model selection using Akaike weights.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11 (1): 192–196.