IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v98y2008i3p1103-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimates of the Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan's Laws

Author

Listed:
  • Leigh Linden
  • Jonah E. Rockoff

Abstract

We estimate the willingness to pay for reductions in crime risk using the location and move-in dates of sex offenders. We find significant effects of sex offenders' locations that are geographically localized. House prices within 0.1 miles of a sex offender fall by 4 percent on average. We then use this finding to estimate the costs to victims of sexual offenses, and find costs of over $1 million per victim--far greater than previous estimates. However, we cannot reject the alternative hypotheses that individuals overestimate risks posed by offenders or that living near an offender poses significant costs exclusive of crime risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Leigh Linden & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2008. "Estimates of the Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan's Laws," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1103-1127, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:98:y:2008:i:3:p:1103-27
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.3.1103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.98.3.1103
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/june08/20060620_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/june08/20060620_app.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Estimates of the Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan’s Laws (AER 2008) in ReplicationWiki

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:98:y:2008:i:3:p:1103-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.