Economists are now a growing presence in the study of crime. For example, economists now regularly publish in the top journal Criminology and they are also showing up regularly on National Research Council panels dealing with crime. This conference is designed to recognise and encourage the increased presence of economics in criminology and of crime in economics.Better research on crime will be created when good criminologists work with economists when they wish to tackle difficult causal questions with observational data. The summer workshop is designed specifically to enable collaborations between economists and criminologists/sociologists.
Both senior and junior scholars from both fields have been invited, so that junior scholars can establish new working relationships. The incoming president of the American Society of Criminology, Gary Lafree, has agreed to host a "crime and economics' series at the 2006 American Society of Criminology annual conference in November 2006 as well as pursue a prominent economist for one of his Presidential Plenary sessions. The organisers are actively pursuing the acquisition of administrative data which would be of interest to both economists and criminologists and these new data will be presented at the conference, with the stipulation that research teams accessing the data must be interdisciplinary.
This is a very exciting proposal, with potentially great impact on the important area of criminology and the economics of crime
