This paper evaluates the effect on crime of creating a fundamental modern-day institution: centralized professional police forces tasked with preventing crime. We study the 1829 formation of the London Metropolitan Police - the first professional force worldwide. Using newly digitized and...

In this paper, we focus on the problem created by asymmetric information about the enforcer's (agent's) costs associated to enforcement expenditure. This adverse selection problem affects optimal law enforcement because a low cost enforcer may conceal its information by imitating a high cost...

In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium model of crime and show that law enforcement has different roles depending on the equilibrium characterization and the value of social norms. When an economy has a unique stable equilibrium where a fraction of the population is productive and the...

As regards to the abrupt growth of crime, it has been analyzed that, only with Becker's (1968) original findings, is not sufficient to prove this phenomena. Thus, many researches have incorporated new paradigms with the intention to explain the mechanisms which react to crime. New research lines...

Using an identification strategy based on random assignment of refugees to different municipalities in Denmark between 1986 and 1998, we find strong evidence that gang crime rates in the neighbourhood at assignment increase the probability of boys to commit crimes before the age of 19, and that...

Using an identification strategy based on random assignment of refugees to different municipalities in Denmark between 1986 and 1998, we find strong evidence that gang crime rates in the neighbourhood at assignment increase the probability of boys to commit crimes before the age of 19, and that...