Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Accounting for the Racial Property Crime Gap in the US: A Quantitative Equilibrium Analysis

Contents:

Author Info

  • Marco Cozzi

    () (Queen's University)

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of both labor market conditions and asset poverty on the property crimes involvement of American males. Since the mid 60s, the property crimes arrest rate has been four times higher for black males if compared to white ones. Another set of stylised facts show for the first demographic group lower educational levels and worse labor market outcomes, with the African Americans supplying less hours of labor, gaining lower wages, experiencing both higher unemployment duration and rates. At the same time, more than 30% of black households had a negative net worth. A dynamic general equilibrium model is developed, exploiting these facts to quantitatively assess the race crime gap, that is the difference in crime explained by the difference in observables. The model is calibrated relying on US data and solved numerically. The model captures well relevant dimensions of the crime phenomenon, such as the inmates composition by race, employment status and education. Simulation results show that the observed poverty and labor market outcomes account for as much as 90% of the arrest rates ratio. Finally the model is used to compare two alternative policy experiments aimed at reducing the aggregate crime rate: increasing the expenditure on police seems to be cost effective, when compared to an equally expensive lump-sum subsidy targeted to the high school dropouts.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1233.pdf
File Function: First version 2010
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Queen's University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 1233.

as in new window
Length: 49 pages
Date of creation: Jan 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1233

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6
Phone: (613) 533-2250
Fax: (613) 533-6668
Email:
Web page: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Property crimes; Computable General Equilibrium; Incomplete Markets; Race; Wealth Inequality;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Rubén Hernández-Murillo & John Knowles, 2004. "Racial Profiling Or Racist Policing? Bounds Tests In Aggregate Data," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 45(3), pages 959-989, 08.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Lowering crime: police versus redistribution
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2010-03-02 15:32:00

Lists

This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
  1. Economic Logic blog

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1233

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Babcock).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.