Affiliation:
1. Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin–Whitewater , 800 W. Main Street , Whitewater, WI 53190, USA
Abstract
AbstractWe exploit police and crime data from California over 26 years to construct a dynamic panel, which is then estimated using Arellano–Bover/Blundell–Bond techniques to address concerns about simultaneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and inertial effects in the policing-crime relationship. We find no evidence that increases in police staffing lead to meaningful reductions in crime through either deterrence or incapacitation. Estimates are not wholly supportive of a compelling relationship between prior criminal offending and current police staffing; providing suggestive evidence that, at least within our sample, simultaneity bias may be more modest in nature than has been previously supposed in prior studies.
Funder
University of Wisconsin—Whitewater College of Business and Economics
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Subject
Economics and Econometrics