Let’s Do the Crime Drop Again
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy….
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy….
Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, has big ambitions but knows he must first master the small stuff. He’s also a polymath who relies heavily on data and new…
…here, when Dubner took on French political scientist Sebastien Roche and his theory that sport causes crime. More recently, Freakonomics contributor Justin Wolfers reported on a study showing that crime…
Crime trends have been mixed in the last few years, with some crimes increasing (mostly involving violence) and others declining (the majority of property crimes). In spite of the facts,…
The major news media (see for instance here and here) have been reporting recently on the hypothesis that banning lead from gasoline caused a reduction in crime. This follows a…
…much time talking about crime is a wonderful thing. It means that the nationwide crime downturn has allowed people to worry about other things — especially, at the moment, the…
…via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) instead of checks (which are easily converted to crime-fueling cash): It has been long recognized that cash plays a critical role in fueling street crime…
We now have more access to TV, movies, and streaming entertainment than anytime in history. So what do we actually know about what all that screen time does to us?…
It facilitates crime, bribery, and tax evasion – and yet some governments (including ours) are printing more cash than ever. Other countries, meanwhile, are ditching cash entirely. And if Star…
…outlet for young men and perhaps keeps them out of trouble. To the contrary, Roche contends, “the practice of sport never reduces the number of crimes” and, furthermore, sports can…
…York Times in this fascinating article, the hurricane was “one of the greatest crime-control tools ever deployed against a high-crime city.” If Mr. Scharf wants some advice in dealing with…
…harbinger of future crime reductions, not future crime increases. The only argument one could make for declining abortions in the 1990s leading to rising crime rates down the road would…
Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an article suggesting that much of the decline in crime in the 1990s may have been due to the reduction of childhood lead…
He argues that personal finance is so simple all you need to know can fit on an index card. How will he deal with Steve’s suggestion that Harold’s nine rules…
…paper: Watching TV associates with higher estimates of crime prevalence among non-religious viewers (ordinary cultivation), but it is correlated with lower estimates of crime prevalence and lower assessment of victimization…
…find that where people are more impatient and discount the future more heavily, property and violent crimes are higher. In particular, the correlation between crime rates and time preferences is…
…sophisticated methods.” This is the UCLA math department’s second foray into crime investigations; last year, Bertozzi and her colleagues created a model to analyze crime “hot spots” in Los Angeles….
…enhancements resulted in a 25% drop in acquisitive crime – exactly the types of crimes that the affected offenders committed. Figure 1 illustrates the average impact of the policy in…
…crime rate the key to having a great baseball season? If so, maybe that’s why the Yankees haven’t won a Series in seven years: New York City crime has fallen…
…new study by Daniel Rees and Kevin Schnepel linking crime and sporting events. They analyze daily crime data, but instead of analyzing the changes around the release of new movies,…
…laws on crime through 2000 has been to lower crime by $28 billion nationally. But the same table reveals that Florida’s RTC laws alone experienced a crime cost reduction through…
Covid-19 is the biggest job killer in a century. As the lockdown eases, what does re-employment look like? Who will be first and who last? Which sectors will surge and…
Whenever I get change for a dollar, I ask the cashier to keep the pennies. They aren’t worth my time, or hers, or yours. Sometimes the cashier refuses for bookkeeping…
…the demise of the penny. It should go, but so should the dollar bill. After all, at 3 percent annual inflation, by 2030 the dollar’s value will have fallen by…
In many ways, the gender gap is closing. In others, not so much. And that’s not always a bad thing.
No one wants mass shootings. Unfortunately, no one has a workable plan to stop them either.
Tom Dart is transforming Cook County’s jail, reforming evictions, and, with Steve Levitt, trying a new approach to electronic monitoring….
…that this is a hard question. You can’t just look across states and compare incarceration rates and crime rates, because the places with the worst crime problem will also tend…
…strategies to the economy, trying to understand why we have this unbelievable drop in crime. I mean, the 1990s were a period when everybody thought the crime was about to…
The junior U.S. Senator from New Jersey thinks bipartisanship is right around the corner. Is he just an idealistic newbie or does he see a way forward that everyone else…
