Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces after a Terrorist Attack

An important challenge in the crime literature is to isolate causal effects of police on crime. Following a terrorist attack on the main Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 1994, all Jewish institutions received police protection. Thus, this hideous event induced a geographical allocat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American economic review Vol. 94; no. 1; pp. 115 - 133
Main Authors Di Tella, Rafael, Schargrodsky, Ernesto
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Nashville American Economic Association 01.03.2004
Subjects
Automobile theft
Causality
Control groups
Crime
Crime patterns
Crime victims
Criminal justice
Criminals
Criminology
Economic models
Economic theory
Economics
Estimates
Geography
Hiring
Impact analysis
Larceny
Muslims
Neighborhoods
Police
Property crimes
Resource management
Robbery
Studies
Terrorism
Theft
Buenos Aires Argentina
Argentina
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Summary:An important challenge in the crime literature is to isolate causal effects of police on crime. Following a terrorist attack on the main Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 1994, all Jewish institutions received police protection. Thus, this hideous event induced a geographical allocation of police forces that can be presumed exogenous in a crime regression. Using data on the location of car thefts before and after the attack, we find a large deterrent effect of observable police on crime. The effect is local, with no appreciable impact outside the narrow area in which the police are deployed.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/000282804322970733