Politics and crime in black & white

Egidio Farina

Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: Does the race of a politician have an impact on the incidence of crime? I answer this question by focusing on large US cities, where active participation in the political life of the African-American candidates has undergone a strong upsurge since 1965. In order to deal with the endogeneity of black candidates to city characteristics, a regression discontinuity is used, exploiting the multi-racial elections decided by a narrow margin of victory. The results show that the number of motor vehicles stolen increases considerably the year after the election of an African-American candidate. I investigate, as a possible channel of influence, how police employment responds to the election of a black mayor, finding a negative effect the year after the electoral race.

Keywords: African-American mayor; close elections; regression discontinuity; crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H70 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sus:susewp:0217

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