Spillover Effects

Objectives: Existing research on the effects of body-worn cameras (BWCs) have found largely consistent results regarding direct significant reductions in citizen complaints and often also report reductions in use of force reports. However, few studies have examined possible spillover effects onto untreated officers. This study explicitly tests for direct and spillover effects of BWCs on the civility of police-citizen encounters and police work activities.

Methods: This study assesses the direct effects of BWCs on citizen complaints, police use of force, and police proactivity and discretion during a 1-year randomized controlled trial in the Boston Police Department. Through a simultaneous quasi-experimental design, this study also investigates whether BWC deployment results in spillover effects onto control officers in treated districts as compared to comparison officers in untreated districts.

Results: Findings indicate that the use of BWCs reduces citizen complaints and police use of force but has no appreciable impact on officer activity or discretion. Furthermore, results indicate significant spillover reductions in citizen complaints for control officers in treated districts.

Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that a limited BWC adoption may generate spillover deterrent impacts as officers and citizens perceive an increased threat that inappropriate and illegal behaviors will be captured on video even when BWCs are not actually present during an encounter. Partial BWC implementation seems like a cost-effective alternative to full implementation. However, police executives and policy makers need to think carefully about possible negative externalities generated by uneven BWC coverage.

A number of countries have recently discovered and are developing oil and gas reserves. Policy makers in such countries are anxious to obtain the greatest benefits for their economies from the extraction of these exhaustible resources by designing appropriate policies to achieve desired goals. One important theme of such policies is the so-called local content created by the sector—the extent to which the output of the extractive industry sector generates further benefits to the economy beyond the direct contribution of its value-added, through its links to other sectors. The use of industrial policy in the petroleum sector to support broad-based economic growth is hardly a new trend in the oil and gas sector. Local content policies (LCPs) were first introduced in the North Sea in the early 1970s and ranged from restrictions on imports to direct state intervention in the oil sector. Over time the aim of LCPs has evolved from creating backward links (that is, supplying input to the local economy through transfer of technology, the generation of value-added in domestic supply sectors, the creation of local employment opportunities, and increasing local ownership and control) to creating forward links link (that is, processing the sector’s output prior to export through, for example, the establishment of refineries, petrochemical industry, and the production of fertilizers). While LCPs have the potential to stimulate broad-based economic development, which is necessary to alleviate poverty and achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), their application in petroleum-rich countries has achieved mixed results. The use of specialized inputs and the technological complexity of the petroleum sector often limit the possibility of developing backward and forward links into the local economy. An economy that is very limited can hardly be expected to quickly supply services (let alone build forward links). A fast-growing petroleum sector coupled with too ambitious local content targets may exacerbate supply bottlenecks arising from increased aggregate final demand. This would ultimately affect employment and output trends in other sectors of the economy, create distortions and inefficiencies, and in some cases even promote corruption. Furthermore, the size and location of petroleum projects also affect the type of potential links, and the speed at which they can efficiently develop. The use of LCPs raises a number of questions:

What exactly is “local content”?
What is the extent of local content in the oil and gas sectors?
Why is increasing local content good for development?
What types of policies can be used to encourage an increase in local content?
What are the costs and benefits of introducing such policies?
How can the implementation of such policies be monitored and how can their impacts be measured?
What are the lessons to be learned from oil- and gas-producing countries that have implemented policies to increase local content?
This study serves to introduce the topic by describing policies and practices meant to foster the development of economic links from the petroleum sector, as adopted by a number of petroleum-producing countries both in and outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Objectives: Focused deterrence seeks to change the violent behavior of gangs not directly targeted by the intervention by leveraging network ties between groups. This study appraises group-based and place-based meth-odologies in detecting direct and spillover crime reduction impacts of a focused deterrence strategy implemented in Oakland, California.

Method: Quasi-experimental designs and panel regression models were used to compare shooting trends for directly treated gangs and census block groups to shooting trends for comparison gangs and block groups that did not directly receive the treatment. The design further analyzed whether vicariously treated gangs and untreated block groups immediately surrounding treated block groups experienced spillover shooting reductions.

Results: The focused deterrence program generated statistically significant direct reductions in shootings in treated block group areas and by treated gangs relative to shootings in untreated block group areas and by untreated gangs, respectively. Spillover deterrent effects of varying magnitudes were found when shooting trends by vicariously treated gangs and in surrounding block groups were compared to shootings trends in comparison units.

Conclusions: Group-based evaluation methodologies were better positioned to detect changes in violent gang behaviors after treatment and to shed light on deterrence mechanisms supporting program efficacy. Future focused deterrence studies should be theory driven rather than black box evaluations.

The evolution of spatiotemporal patterns of water footprint economic benefits (WFEB) in the 32 counties (cities and districts) of the Poyang Lake City Group in Jiangxi Province was evaluated based on panel data. Whereafter, the spatial spillover effects of the regional WFEB in the Poyang Lake City Group were investigated using the spatial Durbin model (SDM). The results showed a rising trend in the total water footprint (WF) and WFEB of the Poyang Lake City Group from 2010 to 2013, and the number of cities at the levels of high efficiency in the Poyang Lake City Group increased steadily. Clear local spatial autocorrelations were found in WFEB, the degree of spatial clustering of WFEB gradually strengthened during 2010–2013, and the spatial agglomeration of WFEB in the Poyang Lake City Group mainly showed Low-High and Low-Low types of trends, which accounted for 9.4% and 12.5%, respectively, of the four types of trends. Our SDM analysis further confirmed significant spatial dependence of WFEB in the Poyang Lake City Group in Jiangxi Province.

Keywords: water footprint economic benefits; spatiotemporal pattern; spillover effects; Poyang Lake City Group

This paper examines economic growth in terms of 'bilateral trade flow' and 'geographical distance' using the spatial dynamic panel data model for the period 1992-2016. The findings illustrate that the effect of spatial spillover or spatial dependence is one of the main economic growth determinants. Also, we find out that spatial relationships across countries and the spatial effects of trade are quite relevant. A country's economic growth is actually affected by the performance of its neighbours and trade partners. This result suggests that the spillover effects of geographical position and trade partners are the key determinants of economic growth. In fact, overlooking such factors can result in misspecification of models. In addition, the findings confirmed that growth rate of labour force has a negative impact on economic growth while the formation of gross fixed capital has a significant positive effect. ARTICLE HISTORY