Yasaman Saeidi

Yasaman Saeidi

PhD Candidate in Economics · London School of Economics

I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the London School of Economics, supervised by Stephen Machin and Tom Kirchmaier. My research is in labour economics, the economics of crime and the economics of education, with urban economics as my secondary field.

I study how the built environment and wider economic conditions shape criminal behaviour and victimisation.

I hold an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.

Primary Labour Economics · Economics of Crime · Economics of Education
Secondary Urban Economics

I am on the 2026–27 job market. My job market paper, Transport and Local Crime Dynamics, and my CV are available here.

Y.Saeidi@lse.ac.uk CV Google Scholar Department of Economics, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

Research

Job Market Paper

Job market paper

Transport and Local Crime Dynamics

Paper (PDF) | Online Appendix

Transport infrastructure reshapes economic activity, and crime is among its most visible local consequences and its least measured. Do new transport nodes create criminal opportunities and change how far offenders travel? I combine the staggered expansion of a large urban light rail network with police records giving offence locations and identified offenders’ home addresses, using areas around planned but unbuilt stations as controls. Station openings raise property crime by 12 percent, concentrated where property is left unattended and absent where a victim must be present. The node supplies targets, not footfall. Offender addresses reveal a second margin, crime commuting. The distance travelled to property offences rises by 0.745 km relative to violent offences, and the response appears only while the network is running. Shoplifting is the cleanest version of this test. Its recorded volume and its premises are unchanged, yet offenders travel 0.901 km farther. The additional offences are not drawn from surrounding areas. The effect is confined to the catchment, and neither transaction prices nor resident composition moves over the decade spanning the openings.

Publications

Football, Alcohol, and Domestic Abuse

with Ria Ivandić, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas

Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 230

Working Papers

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

with Magdalena Dominguez and Tom Kirchmaier

Work in Progress

The Determinants of Hate Crime Offending

with Stephen Machin, Shqiponja Telhaj and Ria Ivandić

Currently in the data gathering stage.

Transport and Victimisation

Using the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Policy Articles

Step Together Pilot Report

with Tom Kirchmaier, Shubhangi Agrawal, Julia Friedberg 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, 2023

Teaching

London School of Economics

Course evaluations available on request.

Sharif Graduate School of Management and Economics