In response to a “crisis” in Social Security financing two decades ago Congress implemented an increase in the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) of 2
months per year for cohorts born in 1938 and after. ...These cohorts began reaching retirement age in 2000. This paper studies the effects of these benefit cuts on recent retirement behavior. The evidence suggests that the mean retirement age of the affected cohorts has increased by about half as much as the increase in the NRA. If older workers continue to increase their labor supply in the same way, there might be important implications for the estimates of Social Security trust fund exhaustion that have played such a major role in recent discussions of Social Security reform.
Crime is Terribly Revealing MASTROBUONI, GIOVANNI
Review of economic studies/The review of economic studies,
11/2020, Letnik:
87, Številka:
6 (317)
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
An increasing number of police departments use information technology (IT) to optimize patrolling strategies, yet little is known about its effectiveness in preventing crime. Based on quasi-random ...access to “predictive policing,” this study shows that IT improves police productivity as measured by crime clearance rates. Thanks to detailed information on individual incidents and offender-level identifiers it also shows that criminals strategies are predictable. Moreover, the introduction of predictive policing coincides with a large negative trend-discontinuity in crime rates. The benefit–cost ratio of this IT innovation appears to be large.
Little is known about the mechanisms through which additional police resources reduce crime. Criminals may perceive the increased risk of being caught and be deterred, or they may be arrested at ...higher rates; preventing them from committing additional crimes while incarcerated. This study sheds light on the mechanisms using individual-level crime data. It documents that shift changes of police patrols disrupt police activity and lower the likelihood of clearing crimes and arresting perpetrators by about 30%. Strong evidence of repeat offending implies that arrests lead to subsequent incapacitation. The aggregate-level relationship between crime rates and clearance rates is in line with sizable incapacitation effects.
•Little is known about the mechanisms through which additional police resources reduce crime.•This study documents that burdensome shift changes of police patrols disrupt police activity and lower the likelihood of clearing crimes and arresting perpetrators by about 30%.•Repeat offending is shown to be widespread, which implies that arrests lead to subsequent incapacitation effects.•Repeat offending generates a convex relationship between clearance rates and crime rates, which can be observed for several crime types.
In 1995, the Social Security Administration started sending out the annual Social Security Statement. It contains information about the worker's estimated benefits at the ages 62, 65, and 70. I use ...this unique natural experiment to analyze the retirement and claiming decision making. First, I find that, despite the previous availability of information, the Statement has a significant impact on workers' knowledge about their benefits. These findings are consistent with a model where workers need to gather costly information in order to improve their retirement decision. Second, I use this exogenous variation in knowledge to analyze the optimality of workers' decisions. Several findings suggest that workers do not change their retirement behavior: i) Workers do not change their expected age of retirement after receiving the Statement; ii) monthly claiming patterns do not show any change after the introduction of the Social Security Statement; iii) workers do not become more sensitive to Social Security incentives after receiving the Statement. More research is needed to establish whether workers are already behaving optimally, but the information contained in the Statement is not sufficient to improve their retirement behavior.
► I exploit the stepwise introduction of Social Security Statement to analyze retirement behavior. ► The Statement has a significant impact on workers' knowledge about their benefits. ► Information appears to be costly. ► But workers do not show any change in behavior. ► Information contained in the Statement is not sufficient to improve their retirement behavior.
This study uses declassified data on US mafia members of the 1950s and 1960s to estimate the criminal network effect on their economic status. I measure economic status exploiting detailed ...information about their place of residence. Housing values are reconstructed using current deflated transactions data. I deal with non-random sampling of mobsters modelling investigations on connections as Markov chains. Reverse causality between economic status and the gangster's position in the network is solved exploiting exogenous exposure to pre-immigration connections. A standard deviation increase in closeness centrality increases economic status by between one-quarter and three-quarters of a standard deviation.
We exploit exogenous variation in legal status following the January 2007 European Union enlargement to estimate its effect on immigrant crime. We difference out unobserved time-varying factors by ...(i) comparing recidivism rates of immigrants from the "new" and "candidate" member countries; and (ii) using arrest data on foreign detainees released upon a mass clemency that occurred in Italy in August 2006. The timing of the two events allows us to setup a difference-in-differences strategy. Legal status leads to a 50 percent reduction in recidivism, and explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and illegal immigrants.
Security measures that deter crime may unwittingly displace it to neighboring areas, but evidence of displacement is scarce. We exploit precise information on the timing and locations of all Italian ...bank robberies and security guard hirings over a decade to estimate deterrence and displacement effects of guards. A guard lowers the likelihood a bank is robbed by 35% to 40%. Over half of this reduction is displaced to nearby unguarded banks. Theory suggests optimal policy to mitigate this spillover is ambiguous. Our findings indicate restricting guards in sparse, rural markets and requiring guards in dense, urban markets could be socially beneficial.
We estimate the "incapacitation effect" on crime using variation in Italian prison population driven by eight collective pardons passed between 1962 and 1990. The prison releases are sudden (within ...one day), very large (up to 35 percent of the entire prison population), and happen nationwide. Exploiting this quasi-natural experiment we break the simultaneity of crime and prisoners and, in addition, use the national character of the pardons to separately identify incapacitation from changes in deterrence. The elasticity of total crime with respect to incapacitation is between — 17 and — 30 percent. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that Italy's prison population is below its optimal level.
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