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Kovandzic, T. V., Schaffer, M. E., Vieraitis, L. M., Orrick, E. A., & Piquero, A. R. (2016). Police, Crime and the Problem of Weak Instruments: Revisiting the “More Police, Less Crime” Thesis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 32, 133-158.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9257-6

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: Paper More Cops or More Jobs? A Trade-Off Framework in Economics of Crime

  AUTHORS: Faraz Farhidi

  KEYWORDS: Economics of Crime, Instrumental Variable, Police Force, Theoretical Modeling, Trade-Off Analysis

  JOURNAL NAME: Advances in Applied Sociology, Vol.14 No.1, January 26, 2024

  ABSTRACT: This paper studies and theorizes the impact of law enforcement in cities on criminal activities. Exploring primarily causing elements, the results from two IV approaches show that increasing police officers per capita in regions does not reduce the corresponding crimes. There are two sets of data used in this research for each IV strategy—the US’s city-level and state-level data. Falsification tests are conducted to validate the empirical conclusion. The results show that increasing the number of law enforcements does not lead to a lower crime rate in the US. Based on the results, I propose an alternative theoretical model compared to the conventional framework, in which there is a trade-off between budgeting police forces—leading to lower crimes—and higher unemployment rates—leading to more crimes. This new framework provides more insights on the roots of such societal tragedy and narrows the gap between the theoretical and empirical findings. Thus, an alternative to control crimes could be legalizing and taxing (possible) illicit activities reduces the crimes and provides funds for creating new jobs while alleviating the pressure on the police forces document.