The Cost of Avoiding Crime: The Case of Bogotá

We use hedonic price models to estimate the value households are willing to pay to avoidviolent crime in the city of Bogotá. We find that households living in the highestsocioeconomic level (stratum 6) pay up to 7.2% of their house values in order to preventaverage homicide rates from increasing in one standard deviation. Households in stratum 5pay up to 2.4% of their house values to prevent homicide rates from increasing. The resultsindicate the willingness to pay for security by households in Bogotá, and additionally,reveal that a pure public good like security, ends up creating urban private markets thatauction security. These markets imply different levels of access to public goods among thepopulation, and actually, the exclusion of the poorest. We find as well evidence of negativecapitalization of the rate of attacks against life, and positive capitalization of the presenceof police authority.