Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced? Theory and Evidence
研究纠正了警察数据中的测量误差，重新估计警察对犯罪的影响弹性，发现美国城市警察配备严重不足，对犯罪经济学和警务政策有重要参考。
Abstract We document the extent of measurement errors in the basic data set on police used in the literature on the effect of police on crime. Analyzing medium to large U.S. cities over 1960 to 2010, we obtain measurement error-corrected estimates of the police elasticity. The magnitudes of our estimates are similar to those obtained in the quasi-experimental literature, but our approach yields much greater parameter certainty for the most costly crimes, the key parameters for welfare analysis. Our analysis suggests that U.S. cities are substantially underpoliced.