Speaker: Professor Giovanni Mastrobuoni (Collegio Carlo Alberto & University of Turin)
Hosted by: University of Liverpool Management School's Economics Group
Open to: Management School PhD students and academic staff, with no sign up needed
Date: Wednesday 8 May 2024
Time: 2-3.15pm
Place: Sherrington Building, Ashton Street - Seminar Room 1
Abstract
We study the effect of mobile police patrolling on crime, using: (a) a natural experiment that increased patrolling in 6,000 well-defined areas, by economically-realistic amounts and under relatively normal circumstances, and (b) a high-frequency geocoded dataset based on the GPS signals transmitted by mobile police officers.
We first document that the natural experiment increased patrolling by large relative amounts, both on certain days and, within those days, at certain hours.
Using a panel dataset at the 5-minute level, we find that the increased police presence generated large immediate reductions in crime.
However, dynamic deterrence is very low: crime rates quickly revert to baseline levels once patrols leave an area.
As a result, the estimated effects using a panel dataset at the daily level have implied elasticities indistinguishable from zero.
Our results show that the effectiveness of mobile police patrolling depends strongly on the size of the dynamic deterrence.
Speaker
Giovanni Mastrobuoni is Professor of Economics at University of Turin, and holds the position of Carlo Alberto Chair at Collegio Carlo Alberto.
His fields of interests are Public Economics, Labor Economics, Economics of Crime, Applied Econometrics.
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