Public Order and Private Payments: Paying for Police Services at Events

Sten Nyberg and Mikael Priks

No 2014:3, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Should organizers of events, such as sport games or concerts, share the costs of maintaining public order in connection to the events? This question has been hotly debated in many countries, especially in connection to soccer hooliganism. Critics argue that organizers should do more to combat unruly behavior, which has significant external effects. The incentive to do so may be muted by the possibility of free riding on the police. We model how co-payments can address the under-provision of security on the part of organizers. However, it has been claimed that co-payments can backfire and lead financially constrained organizers to instead provide less, not more, security. We analyze under which circumstances this may be true. Finally, we exploit a natural experiment from the Swedish soccer league where police payments were introduced for some clubs only. The results are in line with the implications of the model.

Keywords: Public order; private security; public events; co-payments for police; free-riding; externality; hooliganism; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H49 K42 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014-04-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-law and nep-spo
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http://www2.ne.su.se/paper/wp14_03.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public order and private payments: Evidence from the Swedish soccer league (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2014_0003

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