Does Homeownership Reduce Crime? A Radical Housing Reform from the UK
利用英国“购买权”政策这一自然实验，研究发现该政策使自有住房率提高超10个百分点，并显著减少了财产犯罪，主要机制是租户行为改变和公共住房翻新。
Abstract ‘Right to Buy’, a large-scale natural experiment whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy properties at heavily subsidised prices, increased the United Kingdom homeownership rate by over 10 percentage points between its 1980 introduction and the 1990s. This paper studies the impact of this reform on crime by leveraging exogenous variation in eligibility for the policy. Results show that Right to Buy generated significant property crime reductions. Behavioural changes of incumbent tenants and renovation of public properties were the main drivers of this crime reduction. This is evidence of a novel means by which subsidised homeownership and housing policy can reduce criminality.