TY  - JOUR
AU  - Corman,Hope
AU  - Mocan,Naci H.
TI  - Alcohol Consumption, Deterrence and Crime in New York City
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18731
PY  - 2013
Y2  - January 2013
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18731
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18731.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Hope Corman
Department of Economics
Rider University
2083 Lawrenceville Road
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
Tel: 609/895-5559
Fax: 609/896-5387
E-Mail: corman@rider.edu

Naci H. Mocan
Department of Economics
Louisiana State University
2119 Patrick F. Taylor Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-6306
Tel: 225/578-4570
E-Mail: mocan@lsu.edu
AB  - This paper investigates the relationship between alcohol consumption, deterrence, and crime for New York City.  We examine high-frequency time-series data from 1983 to 2001 for one specific location to examine the impacts of variations in both alcohol consumption and deterrence on seven “index” crimes.  We tackle the endogeneity of arrests and the police force by exploiting the temporal independence of crime and deterrence in these high-frequency data, and we address the endogeneity of alcohol by using instrumental variables where alcohol sales are instrumented with city and state alcohol taxes and minimum drinking age.  We find that alcohol consumption is positively related to assault, rape, and larceny crimes but not murder, robbery, burglary, or motor vehicle theft.  We find strong deterrence for all crimes except assault and rape.  Generally, deterrence effects are stronger than alcohol effects.
ER  -