This paper provides a unified explanation for why blacks commit more crime, are located in poorer neighborhoods and receive lower wages than whites. If everybody believes that blacks are more criminal than whites -even if there is no basis for thisthen blacks are offered lower wages and, as a result, locate further away from jobs. Distant residence increases even more the black-white wage gap b...

The relationship between cocaine prices and crime has critical implications for U.S. drug policy, but is theoretically indeterminate because changes in cocaine prices affect crime through changes in both cocaine consumption and expenditures. This paper investigates this relationship using annual data on 30 large U.S. cities from 1981 to 1995. I control for potential simultaneity by using two-st...

Stand Your Ground Laws and Homicides The controversies surrounding Stand Your Ground laws have recently captured the nation’s attention. Since 2005, eighteen states have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right to be, and several additional states are debating the adoption of similar legislation. Despite the implications tha...

Existing economic models of suicide provide no systematic means of addressing how suicidal persons choose their suicide methods. In this article, the tools of search theory are used to characterize suicidal persons’ choices about when, how, and whether to commit suicide in a dynamic context. The theory has implications for policies a¤ecting the availability of suicide methods such as guns. Amon...

The paper estimates the effects of a simpler and faster criminal procedure on the duration of criminal cases and the probabilities that the defendant is charged and convicted. I exploit a criminal procedure reform in the Czech Republic as a quasi-natural experiment. The reform allowed petty offenses to be prosecuted via a simplified (fast-track) procedure. The share of cases actually prosecuted...

Prison Conditions and Recidivism We use a unique data set on post-release behavior of former Italian inmates to estimate the effect of prison conditions on recidivism. By combining different sources of data we exploit variation in prison conditions measured by: 1) the extent of overcrowding at the prison level, 2) the number of deaths in the facility of detention during an inmate’s stay and 3) ...

Abstract We add to our understanding of the optimal method judicial selection by exploiting an unusual feature in North Carolina: judges rotate location every 6 months. This allows us identify existence and source sentencing variation over electoral cycle. show that when elections approach, felony sentences rise. increase is found exclusively are their district election, only contested. When he...

Management matters for firms, but what practices are optimal in hierarchical government organizations? And can skilled managers identify them? A large-scale randomized trial conducted with the police of Rajasthan, India, tested four interventions recommended by senior officers: limitations transfers, rotation duties and days off, increased community involvement, on-duty training. Field experien...

This paper shows that racial composition shocks during the Great Migration (1940–1970) reduced gains from growing up in northern United States for Black families and can explain 27 percent of region’s upward mobility gap today. I identify share increases by interacting pre-1940 migrants’ location choices with predicted southern county out-migration. Locational changes, not negative selection fa...