scholarly journals The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime*

Author(s):  
Anna Bindler ◽  
Randi Hjalmarsson

Abstract This paper evaluates the effect on crime of creating a fundamental modern-day institution: centralized professional police forces tasked with preventing crime. We study the 1829 formation of the London Metropolitan Police – the first professional force worldwide. Using newly digitized and geocoded crime and police data together with difference-in-differences and pre-post designs, we find evidence of a significant reduction in violent crimes (despite the possibility of off-setting increases in clearance and reporting rates). In contrast, a reduction in property crime is not visible

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Buil-Gil ◽  
Angelo Moretti ◽  
Samuel Langton

Police-recorded crimes are used by police forces to map crime patterns and design spatially-targeted strategies. Nevertheless, maps of crimes known to police are affected by selection biases driven by unequal crime reporting rates across social groups. This paper presents a simulation study to analyse the impact of selection biases on crime maps produced at different spatial scales. Based on parameters obtained from the UK Census, we simulate a synthetic population consistent with the characteristics of Manchester. Then, based on parameters derived from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, we simulate crimes suffered by individuals, and their likelihood to be known to police. This allows comparing the relative difference between all crimes and police-recorded incidents at the different spatial scales. While the average relative difference between all crimes and those known to police is 62% across all geographical scales, the measures of dispersion of the relative difference are larger when crimes are aggregated to small geographies. The percentage of crimes unknown to police varies widely across small areas, underestimating the prevalence of crime in certain places while overestimating it in others. Micro-level crime maps are affected by a larger risk of bias than maps produced at larger scales.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manne Gerell

The latest meta-study on CCTV found that it was associated with reductions in property crime and narcotics crime, but mainly in parking lots and residential areas. Recent findings from Sweden however suggested that the association of CCTV with crime may be different in deprived neighborhoods in Sweden where criminal networks exert a large influence. In addition, much less research has been done on the impact of CCTV on crime clearance. The present study follows up on this by considering changes in crime, and crime clearance, associated with CCTV in three deprived neighborhoods in Gothenburg. The three neighborhoods had CCTV installed around their main squares/centers in 2018, and changes in recorded crime for seven crime types taking place in public – as well as the share of those crimes where a suspect has been identified is followed. The changes are compared with changes at similar locations in the other six deprived neighborhoods of Gothenburg. The results show that relative to controls, violence was significantly reduced at treatment areas. No significant change was noted for property crime. Crime clearance rates increased at treatment areas relative to controls for both property crimes and violent crimes, but no change was significant. This suggests a need for further study on contextual differences of different locations for CCTV, to ascertain whether the effect on violence in deprived neighborhoods can be replicated. It also raises questions on whether the CCTV is cost-effective, since it appears to have small effects on both crime and crime clearance.


2019 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
I. E. Limonov ◽  
M. V. Nesena

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of public investment programs on the socio-economic development of territories. As a case, the federal target programs for the development of regions and investment programs of the financial development institution — Vnesheconombank, designed to solve the problems of regional development are considered. The impact of the public interventions were evaluated by the “difference in differences” method using Bayesian modeling. The results of the evaluation suggest the positive impact of federal target programs on the total factor productivity of regions and on innovation; and that regional investment programs of Vnesheconombank are improving the export activity. All of the investments considered are likely to have contributed to the reduction of unemployment, but their implementation has been accompanied by an increase in social inequality.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Sanchez ◽  
Cécile Payet ◽  
Marie Herr ◽  
Anne Dazinieras ◽  
Caroline Blochet ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND The elderly are particularly exposed to adverse events from medication. Among the various strategies to reduce polypharmacy, educational approaches have shown promising results. OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the impact of the implementation of a good medical practice booklet on polypharmacy in nursing homes. METHODS We identified nursing homes belonging to a geriatric care provider that had launched a policy of proper medication use using a good medical practice booklet delivered to prescribers and pharmacists. Data were derived from electronic pill dispensers. The effect of the intervention on polypharmacy was assessed with multilevel regression models, with a control group to account for natural trends over time. The main outcomes were the average daily number of times when medication was administered and the number of drugs with different presentation identifier codes per resident per month. RESULTS 96,216 residents from 519 nursing homes were included between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2014. The intervention group and the control group both decreased their average daily use of medication (-0.05 and -0.06). The good medical practice booklet did not have a statistically significant effect (exponentiated difference-in-differences coefficient 1.00, 95% confidence interval 0.99-1.02, P=.45). CONCLUSIONS Although the good medical practice booklet itself did not seem effective in decreasing medication use, our data show the effectiveness of a higher-level policy to decrease polypharmacy.


Author(s):  
Matthew E. Souther

Researchers disagree about the impact of board independence on firm value. The disagreement generally stems from the endogenous nature of board appointments. I add new evidence to this discussion by using a sample of closed-end funds to document the value-enhancing effects of independent boards. Using cross-sectional, difference-in-differences, and instrumental variables techniques, I address these endogeneity concerns and find consistent evidence that board independence is associated with higher firm value.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7191
Author(s):  
Valerie Paelman ◽  
Philippe Van Cauwenberge ◽  
Heidi Vander Bauwhede

We empirically test whether B Corp certification affects the short- and medium-term growth rates of sustainable enterprises. These businesses are growing in popularity and prevalence but, due to their hybrid nature, often suffer from external credibility issues and competing internal logics. Because of the rigorous and time-involving audit procedure, B Corp certification potentially sends a credible signal about the sustainable nature of the enterprise to its stakeholders. In addition, the B Corp label could help to straighten out internal tensions and align the company towards its dual purpose. Hence, B Corp certification could contribute to company success. We observe 129 firms that were certified between 2013 and 2018 over a period between six years prior and five years post-certification. Using propensity score matching, we identify 129 non-certified matching companies. On this sample, we conduct a difference-in-differences panel regression analysis to investigate the effect of certification. Our dataset allows us to study how the effects of B Corp certification evolve over time, which was previously untested. Our study documents a positive effect of B Corp certification on turnover growth and also that this effect increases with the time since certification, implying that certification requires some time for its full effect to become apparent.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 804
Author(s):  
Jean Dubé ◽  
Maha AbdelHalim ◽  
Nicolas Devaux

Many applications have relied on the hedonic pricing model (HPM) to measure the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for urban externalities and natural disasters. The classic HPM regresses housing price on a complete list of attributes/characteristics that include spatial or environmental amenities (or disamenities), such as floods, to retrieve the gradients of the market (marginal) WTP for such externalities. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative methodological framework that extends the causal relations based on a spatial matching difference-in-differences (SM-DID) estimator, and which attempts to calculate the difference between sale price for similar goods within “treated” and “control” groups. To demonstrate the potential of the proposed spatial matching method, the researchers present an empirical investigation based on the case of a flood event recorded in the city of Laval (Québec, Canada) in 1998, using information on transactions occurring between 1995 and 2001. The research results show that the impact of flooding brings a negative premium on the housing price of about 20,000$ Canadian (CAN).


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4941
Author(s):  
Jin Zhao ◽  
Ghulam Rasool Madni ◽  
Muhammad Awais Anwar ◽  
Syeda Masooma Zahra

It is widely accepted that the economic and social system may be more efficient by reforming institutions. Institutional reforms are attempts to change the rules affecting human interactions and these reforms are fundamental for development and economic prosperity. The reforms can be divided into two categories; political and economic institutional reforms. It is need of the hour to determine the category of reform that is more suitable for developing countries. Moreover, a vast literature describes the impact of institutional reforms but little focused on exploring their impacts on macroeconomic activities. So, this study is an effort to determine the impact of institutional reforms on macroeconomic variables by considering the panel data of 122 developing countries covering the time span from 1996 to 2019. The study applied treatment analysis using the difference-in-differences technique to gauge the effects of reforms. Besides, it will be interesting to know the causes triggering the institutional reforms in developing countries. The findings of the study reveal that economic reforms are more important as compared with political reforms to grow the economies. The countries focusing on political reforms are not able to overcome the economic crisis. Moreover, both types of reforms do not cause each other in these countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Oduse ◽  
Temesgen Zewotir ◽  
Delia North

Abstract Background Sub-Saharan Africa, as opposed to other regions, has the highest under-five mortality rates yet makes the least improvement in reducing under-five mortality. Despite the decline, Ethiopia is among the top ten countries contributing the most to global under-five mortalities. This article examines the impact of the number of antenatal care and the timing of first antenatal care on child health outcomes. We specifically investigated if the utilization of antenatal care services positively affects the reduction of under-five mortality. Methods We employ a difference-in-differences design with propensity score matching to identify direct causal effects of antenatal care on under-five mortality based on the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey data of 2011 and 2016. Our sample includes 22 295 women between the ages of 14–49 who had antenatal care visits at different times before delivery. Results The study revealed 1 481 cases of reported under-five mortality. 99.0% of that under-five mortality cases are women who had less than eight antenatal care visits, while only 1% of that is by women who had eight or more antenatal care visits. Antenatal care visit decreases the likelihood of under-five mortality in Ethiopia by 45.2% (CI = 19.2–71.3%, P-value < 0.001) while the timing of first antenatal care within the first trimester decreases the likelihood of under-five mortality by 10% (CI = 5.7–15.6%, P-value < 0.001). Conclusions To achieve a significant reduction in the under-five mortality rate, Intervention programs that encourages more antenatal care visits should be considered. This will improve child survival and help in attaining Sustainable Development Goal targets.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document