More police, less crime: Evidence from US state data

Ming-Jen Lin
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: 明仁 林

International Review of Law and Economics, 2009, vol. 29, issue 2, 73-80

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.

Keywords: Police; Crime; Instrumental; variables; State; tax; rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144-8188(08)00073-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:29:y:2009:i:2:p:73-80

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Law and Economics is currently edited by C. Ott, A. W. Katz and H-B. Schäfer

More articles in International Review of Law and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().