This paper compares actual US crime and incarceration rates to predicted rates from cross-country regressions. Global … cross-country regressions of crime and incarceration on background characteristics explain much of the variation between … other countries. But the estimated models predict only one-fourth of US incarceration and not all of US crime. The …

equilibrium model is developed, exploiting these facts to quantitatively assess the race crime gap, that is the difference in … crime explained by the difference in observables. The model is calibrated relying on US data and solved numerically. The … model captures well relevant dimensions of the crime phenomenon, such as the inmates composition by race, employment status …