Anti-Crime Laws and Retail Prices
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Hakan Yilmazkuday
Abstract
The fear of becoming a victim of crime acts as a barrier to retail trade for consumers, where retailers attempt to reduce such barriers by enduring additional costs such as insurance or security/surveillance; as a result, retail prices are affected by the possibility of crime. This paper attempts to measure such effects by considering the recent experience of Sacramento County in California, where an anti-panhandling ordinance has been issued to protect retailers. As an application, a difference-in-difference approach is employed to identify the effects of the ordinance on Sacramento gasoline prices at the retail level, by considering the gasoline prices in neighboring counties as the control group of a natural experiment. The results show that the anti-panhandling ordinance has resulted in lower gasoline prices in Sacramento County.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Christoph Engel and two anonymous referees for their feedback and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Anti-Crime Laws and Retail Prices
- Recognition of Non-Controlling Interest in Consolidated Financial Statements Based on Property Rights
- Judicial Behavior and Devolution at the Privy Council
- Quality of Outsourced Services, Opportunism and Contract Design
- Skill-Biased Technological Change, Earnings of Unskilled Workers, and Crime
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Articles in the same Issue
- Anti-Crime Laws and Retail Prices
- Recognition of Non-Controlling Interest in Consolidated Financial Statements Based on Property Rights
- Judicial Behavior and Devolution at the Privy Council
- Quality of Outsourced Services, Opportunism and Contract Design
- Skill-Biased Technological Change, Earnings of Unskilled Workers, and Crime
- The Selection of Litigation against Government Agencies: Evidence from China
