When do more police induce more crime?

Casilda Lasso de la Vega; Oscar Volij; Federico Weinschelbaum

doi:10.1007/s00199-022-01477-7

When do more police induce more crime?

Casilda Lasso de la Vega, Oscar Volij, Federico Weinschelbaum

Department of Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the equilibrium of a Walrasian economy for an increase in police expenditure to induce an increase in crime. It turns out that this is essentially the condition for the Laffer curve to be downward sloping at a given ad valorem tax rate. Notably, such a perverse effect of police on crime is consistent with any appropriation technology and could arise even if the level of police protection is the socially optimal one.

Original language	English
Journal	Economic Theory
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-022-01477-7
State	Accepted/In press - 1 Jan 2022

Keywords

Crime
Laffer curve
Police
Theft
Walrasian equilibrium

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1007/s00199-022-01477-7

Cite this

@article{5ac6de6864994eff88e2d0df627b902c,

title = "When do more police induce more crime?",

abstract = "We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the equilibrium of a Walrasian economy for an increase in police expenditure to induce an increase in crime. It turns out that this is essentially the condition for the Laffer curve to be downward sloping at a given ad valorem tax rate. Notably, such a perverse effect of police on crime is consistent with any appropriation technology and could arise even if the level of police protection is the socially optimal one.",

keywords = "Crime, Laffer curve, Police, Theft, Walrasian equilibrium",

author = "{Lasso de la Vega}, Casilda and Oscar Volij and Federico Weinschelbaum",

note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Galiani, Naomi Gershoni, Andr{\'e}s Neumeyer, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, two anonymous referees and the associate editor for useful comments. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (research Grant 962/19). Lasso de la Vega and Volij also thank the Spanish Ministerio de Econom{\'i}a y Competitividad (Project PID2019-107539GB-I00) and the Gobierno Vasco (Project IT1697-22) for research support. An earlier version of this paper circulated under the title “Can more police induce more crime?” Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.",

year = "2022",

month = jan,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1007/s00199-022-01477-7",

language = "English",

journal = "Economic Theory",