A STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS OF CRIME AGAINST FOREIGNERS IN UNIFIED GERMANY

Germany has experienced a high and rising rare of anti-foreigner viole nce during the early 1990s. To analyze the determinants of crime again st foreigners we assembled a new data set on the number and nature of such crimes at the county level based on newspaper reports. We End sig nificant differences in the patterns of violence in the eastern and we stern parts of the country. The incidence of anti-foreigner crime is h igher in the east and rises with distance from the former West German border. Economic variables like unemployment and wages matter little f or the level of crime once location in the east is taken into account. The relative number of foreigners in a county has no relationship wit h the incidence of ethnic crimes in the west, whereas in the east it h as a positive association with the number of crimes per resident and a negative association with the number of crimes per foreign resident.