Essays in economics of crime: Guns, drugs, and the police

Kyriazis, Anna

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115576 Copy

Description

Title

Essays in economics of crime: Guns, drugs, and the police

Author(s)

Kyriazis, Anna

Issue Date

2022-04-20

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Thornton, Rebecca

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Thornton, Rebecca

Committee Member(s)

• Albouy, David
• Marx, Benjamin
• Garin, Andrew

Department of Study

Economics

Discipline

Economics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• concealed carry
• crime
• police behavior
• police shootings
• marijuana laws
• arrests
• police performance

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three papers that, together, evaluate the effects of gun laws and drug policies on the behavior of police and offenders and how they differentially impact marginalized communities. I use modern econometric techniques and natural experiments to estimate causal effects. In chapter 1, I examine the effects of concealed carry laws on the incidence of fatal police shootings and officers killed or assaulted. I also explore potential mechanisms and examine how the impacts of these laws on fatal police shootings vary by suspects’ race. I study the state-level staggered rollout of two types of concealed carry laws: Right-to-carry (RTC) laws, which only allows qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons, and Permitless carry (PC) laws, which requires no permits. I find an increase in non-fatal assaults of officers under both RTC and PC. Yet, only under PC laws do fatal shootings of suspects rise–disproportionately affecting minorities–while fewer police are killed in action. These findings are relevant for conversations surrounding police interactions, how to mitigate police violence and how to keep officers safe, as well as for the ongoing debates on gun laws. In chapter 2, I explore the argument that less strict recreational marijuana laws could potentially free up police time, which officers can then allocate towards other types of offenses. Specifically, I examine how decriminalization and legalization of recreational marijuana affect first, marijuana-related arrests and second, whether there are spillovers in arrests of non-marijuana related offenses and police performance. I leverage the state-level variation of recreational marijuana laws and I estimate the effects using a doubly robust estimator. I find that decriminalization and legalization of RM decrease marijuana-related arrests by around 77% and 9%, respectively. However, neither of these laws seem to have any statistically significant spillover effect on arrest rates of other types of crimes or police performance. In chapter 3, I revisit a much debated question: “what is the effect of concealed carry laws on crime?” I add to the existing literature by (1) studying the effect of both Right-to-carry (RTC) and Permitless carry (PC) laws, (2) deploying a doubly robust estimation method that improves on the traditional two-way-fixed-effects estimator, and (3) using data from 1980 to 2020. I find that when states move from less lenient concealed carry laws to RTC violent crime rates increase on average by 22% and property crime rates by 13%. When states move from RTC to PC experience an increase in violent crime rates of 3.4% while there is no detectable increase in property crime rates.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Anna Kyriazis

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