Although the theoretical literature on corruption is well developed, empirical work in this area has lagged because it has proven difficult to isolate corrupt behavior in the data. In this paper, we look for evidence of corruption in an unlikely place: the highest echelons of Japanese sumo...

Measurement of seat belt and air bag effectiveness is complicated by the fact that systematic data are collected only for crashes in which a fatality occurs. These data suffer from sample selection since seat belt and air bag usage influences survival rates which in turn determine whether a...

Measuring the relative likelihood of fatal crash involvement for different types of drivers would seem to require information on both the number of fatal crashes by driver type and the fraction of drivers on the road falling into each category. In this paper, however, we present a methodology...

Race has long been recognized as playing a critical role in policing. In spite of this awareness, there has been virtually no previous research attempting to quantitatively analyze the issue. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the racial composition of a city's police force and...

We analyze a unique data set detailing the financial activities of a drug-selling street gang on a monthly basis over a four-year period in the recent past. The data, originally compiled by the gang leader to aid in managing the organization, contain detailed information on both the sources of...

It is typically difficult to differentiate empirically between deterrence and incapacitation since both are a function of expected punishment. In this paper we demonstrate that the introduction of sentence enhancements (i.e. increased punishments that are added on to prison sentences that would...

Private expenditures on crime reduction have potentially important externalities. Observable measures such as barbed-wire fences and deadbolt locks may shift crime to those who are unprotected, imposing a negative externality. Unobservable precautions, on the other hand, may provide positive...

This paper demonstrates that rising crime rates in cities are correlated with city depopulation. Instrumental variables estimates, using measures of the certainty and severity of a state?s criminal justice system as instruments for city crime rates, imply that the direction of causality runs...

While it is widely believed by academics, politicians, and the popular press that incumbent congressmen are rewarded by the electorate for bringing federal dollars to their district, the empirical evidence supporting that claim is extremely weak. One explanation for the failure to uncover the...

This paper tests several theories of the effects of congressional representation on state economic growth. States that were represented by very senior Democratic congressmen grew more quickly during the 1953-1990 period than states that were represented by more junior congressional delegations....