More Police, Less Crime

by  Alex Tabarrok in

After more than two weeks of unusual killings and robberies in Washington DC, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey has called a crime emergency.  During a crime emergency the Chief can increase shifts and get more police on the street.  This is exactly the right thing to do.  My research with Jon Klick shows that crime in Washington DC falls significantly during high terror-alert periods when the police double up on shifts much as they do during a crime emergency. 

More generally, when one combines estimates of police effectiveness that come from myself and Klick, Steve Levitt, Bill Evans and Emily Owens and others with data on the costs of hiring police, it’s clear that police are a bargain.  We could double the number of police in the United States and the costs of crime would fall by substantially more than the cost of police.  (Reallocating police and prison space from drug users to violent criminals would also help.)

The Tragedy of Beirut

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief for NBC news, writes about how much can change in a matter of weeks.Beirut

A few weeks ago, I was here and working on just that story – it was even called “Beirut is back.”

It
was supposed to be about how the economy has revived, the restaurants
are full, the nightclubs are hopping, and the beaches are full of women
in bikinis.

Today I’m standing here wearing a flak jacket, watching the airport burning, and there are more strikes expected.

Thanks to Amanda Agan for the pointer.

PJ O’Rourke on Moral Sentiments

by  Alex Tabarrok in

PJ O’Rourke is so funny you sometimes forget how smart he is.  I learned more about economic growth from Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics than from many a mathematical treatise.  In particular, in Eat the Rich O’Rourke pounded home the point that absence of government led to very different outcomes in 19th century America than in post-communist Albania.  Economists have only just begun to try to explain why.

Here is a recent review from O’Rourke of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Smith claimed that what we do,
when we develop morality, is shape our natural sympathies into the
thoughts and actions that we would expect from an Impartial Spectator
who is sympathetic, but objective and all-knowing, yet still
sympathetic anyway.

"When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so
selfish, how comes it," Smith asked, "that our active principles should
often be so generous and so noble?" The answer is "the inhabitant of
the breast . . . the great judge and arbiter of our conduct." Looking
at things from the Impartial Spectator’s point of view instructs us in
the self-discipline that we need to behave well in our condition of
natural liberty. Consider how toddlers or drunks behave, who haven’t
yet received, or who have temporarily forgotten, their instructions.

If, Smith wrote, the Impartial Spectator did not teach us "to
protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty,"
then "a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of
lions." Or toddlers. Or drunks. Or Jack Abramoff’s office.

Harry Was Correct

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Addendum: Restored with the help of Ted Frank and others.

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any
way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex
part always gets in the way.
Sally: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and
there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I’m having sex with these men without my
knowledge?
Harry: No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with
you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he
finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a
woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.
Sally: What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?
Harry: Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out
there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
Harry: I guess not.
Sally: That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in
New York.

Here’s an abstract from a recent meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (no online paper that I could find):

Getting Both Sides of the Story: Sexual Attraction and Sexual Events
Between Opposite-Sex Friends

Matteson, Lindsay K. (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,
[email protected]); Gragg, Brittany I.; Stocco, Corey S.; Bleske-Rechek, April

Debate exists on whether opposite-sex friends experience sexual
attraction to one another and, if so, whether that attraction adds
spice or strife to the friendship. Little systematic research,
however, has evaluated these questions; and existing studies have not
asked for both friends’ perspectives. In the current study, 89 pairs
of young adult opposite-sex friends (mean friendship duration = 2
years) reported on their friendship. Men reported more sexual
attraction to their friends than did women, and this sex difference
endured after controlling for men’s greater sexual unrestrictedness.
Approximately 25% of friendship pairs had romantically kissed, and
over 10% had "fooled around." Attraction to friend was not related to
friendship duration, and sexual events occurred at various time
points in the friendship, suggesting that attraction to friends isn’t
something that is "overcome" with time. We discuss our findings in
the context of mainstream literature suggesting that opposite-sex
friendships are inherently platonic.

Harry was Correct

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any
way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex
part always gets in the way.
Sally: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and
there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don’t.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I’m having sex with these men without my
knowledge?
Harry: No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with
you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he
finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a
woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.
Sally: What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?
Harry: Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out
there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.
Harry: I guess not.
Sally: That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

Here’s an abstract from a recent meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (no online paper that I could find):

Getting Both Sides of the Story: Sexual Attraction and Sexual Events
Between Opposite-Sex Friends

Matteson, Lindsay K. (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,
[email protected]); Gragg, Brittany I.; Stocco, Corey S.; Bleske-Rechek, April

Debate exists on whether opposite-sex friends experience sexual
attraction to one another and, if so, whether that attraction adds
spice or strife to the friendship. Little systematic research,
however, has evaluated these questions; and existing studies have not
asked for both friends’ perspectives. In the current study, 89 pairs
of young adult opposite-sex friends (mean friendship duration = 2
years) reported on their friendship. Men reported more sexual
attraction to their friends than did women, and this sex difference
endured after controlling for men’s greater sexual unrestrictedness.
Approximately 25% of friendship pairs had romantically kissed, and
over 10% had "fooled around." Attraction to friend was not related to
friendship duration, and sexual events occurred at various time
points in the friendship, suggesting that attraction to friends isn’t
something that is "overcome" with time. We discuss our findings in
the context of mainstream literature suggesting that opposite-sex
friendships are inherently platonic.

Private Foreign Aid

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The LATimes has a superb set of articles on remittances, it focuses not just on remittances from the U.S. to Mexico but also from Japan to the Phillipines, Italy to Kenya and  Florida to Haiti. 

Migrants have been sending money home, in one form or another, for
centuries. But only recently have economists recognized its
significance. Today, remittances are the largest, fastest-growing and
most reliable source of income for developing countries. Poor nations
reported $167 billion in receipts from overseas workers last year,
according to the World Bank, more than all foreign aid. Including
unrecorded transactions, the bank estimates that the total exceeded
$250 billion.

…Mexico’s annual remittance inflow has doubled since 2002 and reached
$20 billion last year, second only to petroleum as a generator of
wealth for the country.

Other developing nations also depend
heavily on their migrants’ money. Brazilian laborers in Japan send home
more than $2 billion a year, out-earning their country’s coffee
exports. Remittances bring in more than tea exports do in Sri Lanka and
tourism does in Morocco. In Jordan, Lesotho, Nicaragua, Tonga and
Tajikistan, they provide more than a quarter of the gross national
product.

Remittances_1

Thanks to Carl Close for the pointer.

Market Approaches to Conservation

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The Nature Conservancy continues to pioneer innovative, market-based approaches to conservation.

The Nature Conservancy announced today the purchase of six federal
trawling permits and four trawling vessels from commercial fishermen in
Morro Bay as part of a collaborative effort to protect a vast swath of
ocean off the coast of central California and help reform a troubled
fishery. The precedent-setting acquisitions represent the nation’s
first private buy out of Pacific fishing vessels and permits for
conservation purposes.

Thanks to Monique van Hoek for the pointer.

Markets in Everything: Child Brides

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Another sad one (from the NYT Magazine):

In Afghanistan, a child bride is very often just that: a child, even a preteen,
her innocence betrothed to someone older, even much, much older.  Rather than a willing union between a man and woman, marriage is frequently a
transaction among families, and the younger the bride, the higher the price she
may fetch.

Repent and be rewarded

by  Alex Tabarrok in

…the Yobe State Government [in Nigeria, AT] determined to curb the
spate of armed robbery in the state introduced a novel anti-crime,
social protection programme, what it termed "the repentant robbers
scheme". The objective was to encourage armed robbers in the state to
confess to their sins, and if they did and signed up for the programme,
the state offered to pay them a sum of N5, 200 per month. The repentant
robbers were only required to swear with the Holy Qu’ran that they
would never again return to their bad ways.

    Either the government does not understand elasticity of supply, surely the elasticity of supply of "repentant robbers" is infinite or they believe that they public does not understand the concept of time consistency.  Either way this does not seem like a good program.  More on the story here.

The Coase Theorem and Parties

by  Alex Tabarrok in

A conversation in Carow Hall:

Can I bring anything to the party tonight?

No thanks.  I’m stopping by the store on the way home and there’s no point both of us shopping.

Ah, the Coase Theorem.

Yeah, since there are no women involved we can be efficient.

I might add that we all had a good laugh when my wife arrived at the party a little later than I bearing all kinds of gifts.  The other speaker has sworn me to secrecy but let’s just say he is not the sort of person to argue without evidence.   

Random Links for the Day

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Gene Expression interviews Steven Pinker.

Support for vaccine markets from two former officials in the Clinton and Bush administrations.

A real life Numbers guy, Stanford mathematician Lawrence Wein scares us with calculations, "a few grams of
botulinum could contaminate a tanker and potentially poison 100,000 gallons of
milk."

Thanks to Carl Close and Razib Khan for pointers.