Yasaman Saeidi

Job market paper

Transport and local crime dynamics

Transport infrastructure reshapes economic activity, with crime among its most salient local consequences. Do new transit nodes create criminal opportunities and change how far offenders travel? I combine the staggered expansion of a large urban light rail network in a major UK city with police records containing offence locations and identified offenders’ home addresses, using areas around planned but unbuilt stations as controls. Station openings raise acquisitive property crime in the local area by 12 percent, concentrated in offences against unattended property. Premises data sharpen the contrast: occupied-home burglaries get no response, while shed, garage, and closed-shop burglaries get five times the response rate. Offender addresses reveal a second margin. After an opening, the distance offenders travel to acquisitive offences rises by 0.745 km relative to violent offences. Shoplifting is the cleanest within-category test: its recorded volume and its incidence in commercial premises are unchanged, yet identified offenders travel 0.901 km farther. A destination-choice model shows the distance penalty falling only for acquisitive crime, and the mobility response appears only while the network is running. The effect is confined to the catchment, and neither transaction prices nor resident composition moves over the decade spanning the openings

Football, Alcohol, and Domestic Abuse

with Ria Ivandić, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas

Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 230

Boom, Bust, Echo: Effect of the Cost of Living Crisis on Crime

with Magdalena Dominguez and Tom Kirchmaier

Abstract

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Step Together Pilot Report

Tom Kirchmaier, assisted by Shubhangi Agrawal, Julia Friedberg, Yasaman Saeidi and Ricky Wang

Youth Endowment Fund, January 2025

An evaluation of the Step Together pilot, which placed trained adult chaperones on routes used by children walking to and from school across the West Midlands. The study assesses whether a robust quantitative evaluation of the programme is feasible, using police administrative data and the National Pupil Database to examine crime, antisocial behaviour, school attendance and attainment.

The Impact of Transboundary Haze on Agricultural Productivity in Southeast Asia

with Yohan Iddawela and Son Le

Prepared for the Green Economy Diagnostic Project, World Bank / 505 Economics

Abstract

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