Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced? Theory and Evidence

Aaron Chalfin; Justin McCrary

doi:10.1162/rest_a_00694

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Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced? Theory and Evidence

Aaron Chalfin¹; Justin McCrary²

¹ University of Pennsylvania · ² University of California, Berkeley

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2018 open access

Abstract We document the extent of measurement errors in the basic data set on police used in the literature on the effect of police on crime. Analyzing medium to large U.S. cities over 1960 to 2010, we obtain measurement error-corrected estimates of the police elasticity. The magnitudes of our estimates are similar to those obtained in the quasi-experimental literature, but our approach yields much greater parameter certainty for the most costly crimes, the key parameters for welfare analysis. Our analysis suggests that U.S. cities are substantially underpoliced.

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_00694
Volume: 100 (1)
Pages: 167-186
Language: en
Export: BibTeX
Sources: openalex crossref