The Spillover Effect of Race on Police Expenditures : An Alternative Test of the Minority Threat Hypothesis

This paper implements a novel application of spatial econometrics to test the minority threat hypothesis by estimating the relationship and potential spillovers between race and police expenditures. This paper uses a strategic interaction framework to describe the mechanism that may drive expenditure spillovers as well as demographic spillovers. Estimating a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), the findings of this study show counties with more residential segregation and are more conservative exhibit positive spillovers on neighboring county police expenditures. This paper makes a contribution by showing the effects of greater minority threat is not limited within geographic boundaries