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The effect of private police on crime: evidence from a geographic regression discontinuity design
Author(s) -
MacDonald John M.,
Klick Jonathan,
Grunwald Ben
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/rssa.12142
Subject(s) - regression discontinuity design , discontinuity (linguistics) , boundary (topology) , natural experiment , variety (cybernetics) , regression , regression analysis , econometrics , geography , criminology , demographic economics , statistics , mathematics , psychology , economics , mathematical analysis
Summary Research demonstrates that police reduce crime. We study this question by using a natural experiment in which a private university increased the number of police patrols within an arbitrarily defined geographic boundary. Capitalizing on the discontinuity in patrols at the boundary, we estimate that the extra police decreased crime in adjacent city blocks by 43–73%. Our results are consistent with findings from prior work that used other kinds of natural experiment. The paper demonstrates the utility of the geographic regression discontinuity design for estimating the effects of extra public or private services on a variety of outcomes.