Economics

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Browsing Economics by Author "Boylan, Richard T."

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    Are the geographic disparities in U.S. violent crime rising?
    (Public Library of Science, 2024) Boylan, Richard T.
    Inequality in economic and social outcomes across U.S. regions has grown in recent decades. The economic theory of crime predicts that this increased variability would raise geographic disparities in violent crime. Instead, I find that geographic disparities in homicide rates decreased. Moreover, these same decades saw decreases in the geographic disparities in policing, incarceration, and the share of the population that is African American. Thus, changes in policing, incarcerations, and racial composition could have led to a decrease in inequality in homicide rates. Moreover, the joint provision of law enforcement by local, state, and federal authorities may have reduced the impact of economic distress on violent crime.
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    The Effect of Punishment Severity on Plea Bargaining
    (The University of Chicago Press, 2012-08) Boylan, Richard T.
    This study examines whether criminal suspects facing more severe punishments are more likely to go to trial. Sample selection makes it difficult to obtain valid proxies for severity; for instance, I expect severity to be positively related to the prosecutorﾒs decision to indict, to indict in federal court (versus state court), and to try the suspect. Theoretical and empirical findings indicate that in samples containing only indicted, convicted, or tried suspects, reasonable proxies for severity may be negatively related to actual severity. The assignment of defendants to judges randomizes the severity of punishment in a manner that is unrelated to sample selection. Thus, by examining the effect of these assignments, I find that a 10-month increase in prison sentences raises trial rates by 1 percentage point.
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    Intended and Unintended Consequences of Prison Reform
    (Oxford University Press, 2013) Boylan, Richard T.; Mocan, Naci
    The United States Supreme Court ruled in May 2011 that prison overcrowding in California constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This decision revived a long-standing debate among scholars and policy makers as to whether courts should intervene to protect the well-being of the disfranchised, by forcing states to improve schools, prisons, and mental institutions. We use data that span 1951-2006 to examine the impact of federal court orders condemning prison crowding, and the impact of statesﾒ releases from these court orders. We find that these interventions are associated with lower inmate mortality rates and fewer prisoners per capita. Correctional expenditures increase and welfare cash expenditures decrease while states are under court order, suggesting that the burden of improved prison conditions is borne by welfare recipients. Furthermore, states do not alter correctional spending and welfare cash payments spending after their release from court order, making the original changes in spending permanent. (JEL H7, I38, K4)
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    Power to the People: Does Ownership Type Influence Electricity Service?
    (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Boylan, Richard T.
    After storm-related power outages, many have recommended municipalizing investor-owned utilities, claiming that profit-making utilities have insufficient incentive to prepare for storms. I provide empirical evidence that municipal utilities spend more on maintenance of their distribution network than investor-owned utilities. Nonetheless, I find that storms significantly disrupt electricity consumption in areas served by municipal utilities but do not disrupt areas served by investor-owned utilities. These results are based on a stratified random sample of 241 investor-owned, 96 cooperative, and 94 municipal utilities in the United States between 1999 and 2012. I conclude that municipal utilitiesﾒ in-efficiencies are more important in causing power outages than investor-owned utilitiesﾒ disincentives to spend on maintenance.