TY  - JOUR
AU  - Corman,Hope
AU  - Mocan,Naci
TI  - Carrots, Sticks and Broken Windows
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9061
PY  - 2002
Y2  - July 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9061
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9061.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
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2003-01-01
AB  - This paper investigates the impact of economics conditions (carrots) and sanctions (sticks) on murder, assault, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft in New York City, using monthly time-series data spanning 1974-1999. Carrots are measured by the unemployment rate and the real minimum wage; sticks are measured by felony arrests, police force and New York City residents in prison. In addition, the paper tests the validity of the 'broken windows' hypothesis, where misdemeanor arrests are used as a measure of broken windows policing. The broken windows hypothesis has validity in case of robbery and motor vehicle theft. The models explain between 33 and 86 percent of the observed decline in these crimes between 1990 and 1999. While both economic and deterrence variables are important in explaining the decline in crime, the contribution of deterrence measures is larger than those of economic variables.
ER  -