Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Alcohol Consumption, Deterrence and Crime in New York City

  • Published:
Journal of Labor Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between alcohol consumption, deterrence, and crime for New York City. We use monthly time-series data from 1983 to 2001 to analyze the impacts of variations in both alcohol consumption and deterrence on seven “index” crimes. We tackle the endogeneity of arrests and the police force by exploiting the temporal independence of crime and deterrence in these high-frequency data, and we address the endogeneity of alcohol by using instrumental variables where alcohol sales are instrumented with city and state alcohol taxes and minimum drinking age. We find that alcohol consumption is positively related to assault, rape, and larceny crimes but not murder, robbery, burglary, or motor vehicle theft. We find strong deterrence for all crimes except assault and rape. Generally, deterrence effects are stronger than alcohol effects.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus/current/cv0832.pdf and data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program in 2003 indicate that about 10 % of arrestees tested positive for alcohol, and almost half of arrestees had engaged in binge drinking in the past month (https://www.ncjrs.gov/nij/adam/adam2003.pdf, Table 10).

  2. Also, policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption may not have as strong an impact on alcohol consumption. Recent work by Ruhm et al. (2011), for example, questions previous estimates of a high price elasticity of demand for beer.

  3. Corman and Mocan (2000) is an exception.

  4. Zimmerman and Benson (2007) used two-stage least squares in identifying the impact of alcohol on rape using state panels from 1982 to 2000, and identifying alcohol using tax rates, minimum drinking age, plus other alcohol-related policies. Gyimah-Brempong (2001) used cross-sectional crime data from over 300 census tracts in Detroit in 1992 to analyze the impact of liquor store density on crime. This study relies on the plausibility of the assumption that the two instruments (gas stations and median rent) significantly explain the location of liquor stores but that they are not related to crime.

  5. We use total arrests rather than arrests per crime. This is because we want to avoid imposing a mechanical relationship, by which an increase in crime would necessarily decrease the arrest rate.

  6. Note that the dynamics of this model require multiple lags of the dependent variable on the right-hand side. We further discuss the issue of lag length later in the paper.

  7. Annual data on population by age for New York City was obtained from the New York State Department of Vital Statistics. (http://www.health.ny.gov/nysdoh/vital_statistics/ accessed 11/22/2011). We interpolate monthly figures from the annual ones.

  8. In 1995, the NYPD merged the transit and housing police with the rest of the Department. We have subtracted the estimated number of transit and housing police since those dates to create a consistent series.

  9. Chalfin and McCrary (2012) find administrative data on police strength to be the most accurate source.

  10. Welfare reform was implemented in August of 1997 in New York. Source: http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/welfarereform98.html accessed 11/09/2012).

  11. http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/minimum_wage.asp.

  12. 1982–1984 is the base year.

  13. For completeness, it would be preferable to have information on wine consumption, as well. However, these data are not available for New York City. Note that for the State of New York, ethanol consumption from wine comprised the lowest fraction among the three types of alcohol—about 18 % in 1992, for example.

  14. Data were obtained from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

  15. On average, about 57 % of the ethanol consumption in New York City (excluding wine) was from beer and about 43 % was from spirits.

  16. This result is consistent with the findings of Zimmerman and Benson (2007) who attribute the downward bias in the OLS rape results to endogenous victim actions. That is, if women perceive a higher probability of being raped, they may reduce their alcohol consumption. Of course, this interpretation should be made with caution as our results are based on aggregate data.

References

  • Akaike H (1973) Information theory and the extension of the maximum likelihood principle. In: Petrov BN, Csaki F (eds) The second international symposium on in-formation theory. Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, pp 267–281

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson DA (1999) The aggregate burden of crime. J Law Econ 42(2):611–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becker GS (1974) Crime and punishment: an economic approach. In Essays in the economics of crime and punishment (pp. 1–54). UMI

  • Carpenter C (2007) Heavy alcohol use and crime: evidence from underage drunk-driving laws. J Law Econ 50:539–557

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter C, Dobkin C (2010) The drinking age, alcohol consumption, and crime. Working Paper available at website: http://web.merage.uci.edu/~kittc/Carpenter_Dobkin_Crime_website_01192011.pdf (accessed 11/14/12)

  • Chalfin A, McCrary J (2012) The effect of police on crime: new evidence from U.S. cities, 1960–2010. Working Paper. Retrieved from: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~jmccrary/chalfin_mccrary2012.pdf

  • Corman H, Mocan N (2000) A time-series analysis of crime, deterrence, and drug abuse in New York city. Am Econ Rev 90(3):584–604

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corman H, Mocan N (2005) Carrots, sticks, and broken windows. J Law Econ 48(1):235–266

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Desimone J (2001) The effect of cocaine prices on crime. Econ Inq 39(4):627–643

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Tella R, Schargrodsky E (2004) Do police reduce crime? Estimates using the allocation of police forces after a terrorist attack. Am Econ Rev 94(1):115–133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Draca M, Machin S, Witt R (2011) Panic on the streets of London: police, crime, and the july 2005 terror attacks. Am Econ Rev 101(5):2157–2181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drago F, Galbiati R, Vertova P (2009) The deterrent effects of prison: evidence from a natural experiment. J Polit Econ 117(2):257–280

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ehrlich I (1973) Participation in illegitimate activities: a theoretical and empirical investigation. J Polit Econ 81(3):521–565

  • Ehrlich I (1996) Crime, punishment, and the market for offenses. J Econ Perspect 10(1):43–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gyimah-Brempong K (2001) Alcohol availability and crime: evidence from census tract data. South Econ J 68(1):2–21

  • LaVallee RA, Yi H-Y (2012) Surveillance Report No. 95: apparent per capita alcohol consumption: national, state, and regional trends, 1977–2010. The national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism, U.S. department of health and human services, public health service, national institutes of health

  • Levitt SD (1998) Why do increased arrest rates appear to reduce crime: deterrence, incapacitation, or measurement error? Econ Inq 36(3):353–372

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin M-J (2008) Does unemployment increase crime? Evidence from U.S. data 1974–2000. J Hum Resour 43(2):413–436

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Machin S, Marie O (2011) Crime and police resources: the street crime initiative. J Eur Econ Assoc 9(4):678–701

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markowitz S (2005) Alcohol, drugs and violent crime. Int Rev Law Econ 25(1):20–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raphael S, Winter‐Ebmer R (2001) Identifying the effect of unemployment on crime. J Law Econ 44(1):259–283

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruhm CJ, Jones AS, Kerr WC, Greenfield TK, Terza JV, Pandian RS, McGeary KA (2011) What U.S. data should be used to measure the price elasticity of demand for alcohol? NBER Working Paper No.17578

  • Sack K (1995) How Albany works, lesson 1: lobbying; the beverage industry pushes hard for a tax break, and succeeds. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/12/nyregion/albany-works-lesson-1-lobbying-beverage-industry-pushes-hard-for-tax-break.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed 11/14/12)

  • Schoeni RF, Blank RM (2000) What has welfare reform accomplished? Impacts on welfare participation, employment, income, poverty, and family structure. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper #7627

  • Zimmerman PR, Benson BL (2007) Alcohol and rape: an “economics-of-crime” perspective. Int Rev Law Econ 27:442–444

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This project was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Grant #AA RO3 18154). We are grateful for helpful comments from Sara Markowitz and for valuable research assistance from Oliver Joszt and Tatana Cepkova, Christian Raschke, Deokrye Baek, and Luiza Pogorelova.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rider University, Lawrence Township, NJ, USA

    Hope Corman

  2. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Hope Corman & Naci Mocan

  3. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

    Naci Mocan

  4. IZA, Bonn, Germany

    Naci Mocan

Authors
  1. Hope Corman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Naci Mocan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Naci Mocan.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Instrumental variables regressions with arbitrary lag lengths. Crime equations for New York City, April 1983–January 2002
Full size table
Table 7 OLS regressions. Crime equations for New York City, April 1983-January 2002. Without alcohol consumption
Full size table
Table 8 Full Set of coefficients of the instrumental variables regressions. Crime equations for New York City, April 1983–January 2002
Full size table
Table 9 Full set of coefficients of the first stage regressions dependent variable: alcohol consumption. Crime equations for New York City, April 1983–January 2002
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Corman, H., Mocan, N. Alcohol Consumption, Deterrence and Crime in New York City. J Labor Res 36, 103–128 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-015-9201-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-015-9201-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation