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Nicholas Lovett, David M Welsch, Yuhan Xue, Policing and crime: dynamic panel evidence from California, Oxford Economic Papers, Volume 75, Issue 3, July 2023, Pages 750–779, https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpac041
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Abstract
We exploit police and crime data from California over 26 years to construct a dynamic panel, which is then estimated using Arellano–Bover/Blundell–Bond techniques to address concerns about simultaneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and inertial effects in the policing-crime relationship. We find no evidence that increases in police staffing lead to meaningful reductions in crime through either deterrence or incapacitation. Estimates are not wholly supportive of a compelling relationship between prior criminal offending and current police staffing; providing suggestive evidence that, at least within our sample, simultaneity bias may be more modest in nature than has been previously supposed in prior studies.