IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/irlaec/v29y2009i2p73-80.html

More police, less crime: Evidence from US state data

Author

Listed:
  • Lin, Ming-Jen

Abstract

Economic theory suggests police and crime are negatively correlated. However, it is surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this relation empirically, as areas with greater numbers of crimes tend to hire more police. In order to resolve this simultaneity, we begin by exploring the structure of the financial relationship existing between state and local governments, arguing that variations in state tax rates can serve as an instrumental variable for local police numbers. Two-stage least square (2SLS) result show that the elasticity of police presence with respect to crime is about -1.1 for violent crime, and -0.9 for property crime. These results are mostly significant, and are more negative than those obtained under OLS. Overall, our estimations suggest that police does reduce crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Ming-Jen, 2009. "More police, less crime: Evidence from US state data," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 73-80, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:29:y:2009:i:2:p:73-80
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144-8188(08)00073-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven D. Levitt, 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1244-1250, September.
    2. Samuel Cameron, 1988. "The Economics of Crime Deterrence: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 301-323, May.
    3. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Newey, Whitney & Rosen, Harvey S, 1989. "The Revenues-Expenditures Nexus: Evidence from Local Government Data," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 30(2), pages 415-429, May.
    5. Jesse Levin, 2001. "For whom the reductions count: A quantile regression analysis of class size and peer effects on scholastic achievement," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 221-246.
    6. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    7. Justin McCrary, 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1236-1243, September.
    8. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    9. Morgan Kelly, 2000. "Inequality And Crime," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 530-539, November.
    10. repec:bla:kyklos:v:41:y:1988:i:2:p:301-23 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    12. Lott, John R, Jr & Mustard, David B, 1997. "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 1-68, January.
    13. Cornwell, Christopher & Trumbull, William N, 1994. "Estimating the Economic Model of Crime with Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(2), pages 360-366, May.
    14. Isaac Ehrlich, 1996. "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 43-67, Winter.
    15. Levitt, Steven D. & Miles, Thomas J., 2007. "Empirical Study of Criminal Punishment," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 455-495, Elsevier.
    16. David B. Mustard, 2003. "Reexamining Criminal Behavior: The Importance of Omitted Variable Bias," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 205-211, February.
    17. Kaplow, Louis & Shavell, Steven, 2002. "Economic analysis of law," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1661-1784, Elsevier.
    18. Freeman, Richard B., 1999. "The economics of crime," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 52, pages 3529-3571, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Angela K. Dills & Jeffrey A. Miron & Garrett Summers, 2010. "What Do Economists Know about Crime?," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Crime: Lessons For and From Latin America, pages 269-302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Pallab K. Ghosh & Gary A. Hoover & Zexuan Liu, 2020. "Do State Minimum Wages Affect the Incarceration Rate?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(3), pages 845-872, January.
    3. Helen Tauchen, 2010. "Estimating the Supply of Crime: Recent Advances," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Mirko Draca & Stephen Machin & Robert Witt, 2011. "Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime, and the July 2005 Terror Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2157-2181, August.
    5. Entorf, Horst, 2012. "Certainty and Severity of Sanctions in Classical and Behavioral Models of Deterrence: A Survey," IZA Discussion Papers 6516, IZA Network @ LISER.
    6. Maurice J. G. Bun & Richard Kelaher & Vasilis Sarafidis & Don Weatherburn, 2020. "Crime, deterrence and punishment revisited," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(5), pages 2303-2333, November.
    7. Alexander F. McQuoid & J. Britton Haynes Jr., 2017. "The Thin (Red) Blue Line: Police Militarization and Violent Crime," Departmental Working Papers 56, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    8. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    9. Amanda Ross & Anne Walker, 2014. "Low Priority Laws and the Allocation of Police Resources," Working Papers 14-06, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    10. Amanda Ross & Anne Walker, 2017. "The Impact Of Low-Priority Laws On Criminal Activity: Evidence From California," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 239-252, April.
    11. Paolo Buonanno, 2003. "The Socioeconomic Determinants of Crime. A Review of the Literature," Working Papers 63, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2003.
    12. Egidio Farina, 2017. "Politics and crime in black & white," Working Paper Series 0217, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    13. Thomas A. Garrett & Lesli S. Ott, 2008. "City business cycles and crime," Working Papers 2008-026, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    14. Philip J. Cook, 2008. "Assessing Urban Crime And Its Control: An Overview," NBER Working Papers 13781, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Renee Flasher & Melvin A. Lamboy-Ruiz, 2019. "Impact of Enforcement on Healthcare Billing Fraud: Evidence from the USA," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 217-229, June.
    16. Che, Yi & Xu, Xun & Zhang, Yan, 2018. "Chinese import competition, crime, and government transfers in US," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 544-567.
    17. Mejía, Daniel & Restrepo, Pascual, 2016. "Crime and conspicuous consumption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 1-14.
    18. Crinò, Rosario & Immordino, Giovanni & Piccolo, Salvatore, 2019. "Marginal deterrence at work," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 586-612.
    19. Horst Entorf & Hannes Spengler, 2008. "Is Being 'Soft on Crime' the Solution to Rising Crime Rates?: Evidence from Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 837, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    20. Egidio Farina, . "The impact of political and religious leaders on socio-economic outcomes," Economics PhD Theses, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School, number 0218, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    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:eee:irlaec:v:29:y:2009:i:2:p:73-80. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/irle .

    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.