Economics 499: The Economics of Crime, Fall 2013
Instructor: Prof. Jeremy A. Sandford
Office hours: TH 4:00-5:00pm, 335L B&E, or by appointment
Lecture:
3:30-4:45pm MW, BE 208
Homework #1, due
9/13/13
Homework #2, due
10/23/13, American murder mystery, When crime pays
Homework #3, due
12/6/13, Broken windows, What New York City owes James Q. Wilson, Broken
windows: New evidence from New York City and a five-city social experiment
Schedule
Wednesday, August 28: Introduction, description of crime
trends 1960-present in the US
Bureau of Justice Statistics report on homicide trends
optional: An interview with Emily Oster
Wednesday, September 4: Possible reasons for the 1990's
decline
in US crime
reading: Levitt, Steven (2004), "Understanding why crime
fell in the 1990's: four factors that explain the decline, and six that do
not," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 163-190
Monday, September 9: Abortion and crime
reading: Donohue, John and Steven Levitt (2004), "Further evidence that legalized abortion lowered
crime," Journal of Human Resources, 39(1), 29-49
Wednesday, September 11: Crack and lead
reading: Szalavitz, Maia, 5/11/1999, "Cracked
up," salon.com
Drum, Kevin, 2013, "America's real criminal element: lead,"
January/February 2013 issue, Mother Jones
optional readings: Manzi, Jim 1/10/13, "Lead and crime", National Review
Drum, Kevin, various dates "Lead and crime linkfest", Mother Jones
Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use
(figures from class, do not read)
Monday, September 16: Econometrics review: interpreting regression results and omitted variable bias
Wednesday, September 18: No class
Monday, September 23: Education as a determinant of crime
reading: Lochner, Lance and Enrico Moretti (2004), "The effect of
education on crime: evidence from prison inmates, arrests, and
self-reports,"
American Economic Review, 94(1), 155-189
Wednesday, September 25: Immigration and crime
reading: Cowan, Tyler, 2/20/2010, "Latino immigrants and crime," Marginal
revolution blog
Sampson, Robert, 3/11/2006, "Open doors don't invite criminals," The New York
Times
Uniz, Ron, 3/1/2010, "His-Panic," The American Conservative
optional: 2011 Yearbook of
Immigration Statistics, Office of Immigration Statistics
optional:Statistics on illegal
immigration
Monday, September 30: Do police reduce crime?
Levitt, Steven (1997), "Using electoral cycles in police hiring to
estimate the effect of police on crime," American Economic Review,
87(3), 270-290
Wednesday, October 2: Terror alert levels as an instrument
for police hiring
reading: Klick, Jonathan and Alexander Tabarrok (2005), "Using
terror alert
levels to estimate the effect of police on crime," Journal of Law and
Economics, 48(1), 267-279
Monday, October 7: debates 1 and 2
Wednesday, October 9: debates 2 and 3
Monday, October 14: The economic model of crime
reading: Wilson, James (1983), "Thinking about crime," September 1983 issue, The
Atlantic
Wednesday, October 16: The death penalty as a deterrent
readings: Ehrich, Isaac (1975), "The deterrent effect
of capital punishment: a question of life and death," American Economic
Review, 65(3), 397-417
Donohue, John and Justin Wolfers (2005), "Uses and Abuses of
Empirical Evidence in the Death
Penalty Debate
," Stanford Law Review, 58, 791-845
Monday, October 21: debates 4 and 5
Wednesday, October 23: debates 5 and 6
Monday, October 28: Katz, Lawrence, Steven Levitt, and Ellen Shustorovich (2003), "Prison conditions, capital punishment, and deterrence," American Economic Review, 5(2), 318-343
Wednesday, October 30: More on the death penalty
"More on the economics of capital
punishment," "The economics of capital
punishment," "Further
comments on capital punishment," 12/18/2005, 12/25/2005, Becker-Posner
Blog
optional:The cost of Colorado's death penalty, by Justin Marcequ and hollis Whitson
Monday, November 4: Prison conditions and recidividism
reading: Chen, Keith, and Jesse Shapiro, (2007), "Do harsher prison conditions reduce recidivism? A
discontinuity-based approach", American Law and Economics Review,
9(1), pp1-29
Wednesday, November 6: Medical marijuana and traffic fatalities
Anderson, Mark, Benjamin Hansen, and Daniel Rees (2013) "Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption", Journal of Law and Economics, 56(2), pp. 333-369
Monday, November 11: debates 7 and 8
Wednesday, November 13: debates 8 and 9
Monday, November 18: Number of guns and the crime rate
reading: Duggan, Mark, (2001), "More guns, more crime,"
Journal of Political Economy, 109, 1086-1114
reading (skim, enough to get main ideas): Lott, John and David Mustard,
(1997), "Crime, deterrence, and right-to-carry
concealed handguns," Journal of Legal Studies, XXVI, 1-68
Wednesday, November 20: Mandatory office hours (schedule to follow)
Monday, November 25: No class
Wednesday, November 27: No class
Monday, December 2: The social costs of gun ownership
reading: Cook, Phillip and Jens Ludwig, (2006), "The social costs of gun ownership," Journal of Public
Economics, 90, 379-391
Wednesday, December 4: Guns and suicides
reading: Briggs, J. and A. Tabarrok (2014), "Firearms and suicides in US states," International Review of Law and Economics,
37, pp. 180-188
Monday, December 9:A drug gang's finances
reading: Levitt, S. and S. Venkatsh (2000), "An economic analysis
of a drug-selling gang's finances," Quarterly Journal of Economics,
115, pp. 755-789
Wednesday, December 11: no class
Thursday, December 19, 8am: Final exam