Exploring causal relationship between Major League Baseball games and crime: a synthetic control analysis

Hyunwoong Pyun ()

Empirical Economics, 2019, vol. 57, issue 1, No 15, 365-383

Abstract: Abstract Using the Washington Nationals case, which moved from Montreal, Canada, to Washington, DC in 2005, as a natural experiment, I examine the impact of MLB games on crime in a host city. To address endogeneity concerns, this paper applies a synthetic control method with using 21 large cities which host an MLB team as a “donor pool” and employs a triple difference-in-difference approach to estimate the change in crime before and after the Nationals coming, between MLB season and off-season, and Washington, DC and the synthetic Washington. With using monthly crime data from the Uniform Crime Report, only assaults increased by 7–7.5% annually after the Nationals moved to DC; other crimes were unchanged. This result is supported by statistical significance and in-space placebo tests, and several alternative specifications in robustness check. These increases in assaults could be associated with additional costs, annually from $20 to $35 million. Little to no evidence of a causal relationship between MLB games and other types of crime.

Keywords: Major League Baseball; Stadium; Uniform Crime Report; Externality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 R53 Z28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00181-018-1440-9

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