Stirring Up a Hornets' Nest: Geographic Distribution of Crime

Sebastian Galiani, Ivan Lopez Cruz and Gustavo Torrens

No 22166, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper develops a model of the geographic distribution of crime in an urban area. When the police protect some neighborhoods (concentrated protection), the city becomes segregated. When the police are evenly deployed across the city (dispersed protection), an integrated city emerges. Unequal societies face a difficult dilemma in that concentrated protection maximizes aggregate welfare but exacerbates social disparities. Taxes and subsidies that can be employed to offset the disadvantages to agents left unprotected. Private security makes an integrated city less likely. Even under dispersed public protection, rich agents may use private security to endogenously isolate themselves in closed neighborhoods.

JEL-codes: K42 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pr~ and nep-ure
Note: DEV
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Sebastian Galiani & Ivan Lopez Cruz & Gustavo Torrens, 2018. "Stirring up a hornets’ nest: Geographic distribution of crime," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, vol 152, pages 17-35.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22166.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Stirring up a hornets’ nest: Geographic distribution of crime (2018)
Working Paper: Stirring Up a Hornets’ Nest: Geographic Distribution of Crime (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22166

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22166

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().