Fear of crime and housing prices: Household reactions to sex offender registries

Megan's Law requires public dissemination of information from sex offender registries. Opponents to this controversial law have questioned whether households misinterpret or even use this information. One concern was that the information might simply induce a “fear of crime.” This study finds evidence for both use and misinterpretation of the publicly available information on sex offenders. Using a unique dataset that tracks sex offenders in Hillsborough County, Florida, the results indicate that after a sex offender moves into a neighborhood, nearby housing prices fall by 2.3% ($3500 on average). However, once a sex offender moves out of a neighborhood, housing prices appear to immediately rebound. Surprisingly, these price impacts do not appear to differ in areas near high risk offenders labeled as “predators.”     

Criminal incident prediction using a point-pattern-based density model

Law enforcement agencies need crime forecasts to support their tactical operations; namely, predicted crime locations for next week based on data from the previous week. Current practice simply assumes that spatial clusters of crimes or “hot spots” observed in the previous week will persist to the next week. This paper introduces a multivariate prediction model for hot spots that relates the features in an area to the predicted occurrence of crimes through the preference structure of criminals. We use a point-pattern-based transition density model for space–time event prediction that relies on criminal preference discovery as observed in the features chosen for past crimes. The resultant model outperforms the current practices, as demonstrated statistically by an application to breaking and entering incidents in Richmond, VA.     

Measuring the consequences of promoting inner city homeownership

This paper examines low- and moderate-income households in the City of Philadelphia who are becoming homeowners for the first time. We examine two Nehemiah developments subsidized by the City of Philadelphia that offer newly constructed homes at well-below cost. This paper uses a unique survey of these new owners to measure what Nehemiah residents gain in terms of structure and community attributes as they make the transition from renting to owning. The new owners in the Nehemiah complexes significantly improve their housing structures while raising their exposure to crime and weak local public schools. As part of the City’s community development strategy, these developments were expected to increase economic activity near these sites. We document that there is no evidence of local benefit spillovers for census tracts where the Nehemiah developments were built. Our survey results suggest that the new housing developments represent an “oasis” where there are few interactions between the new homeowners and the incumbent residents of the greater community.     

Optimal law enforcement when victims are rational players

The economic analysis of crime usually views a victim as a passive party whose role is limited to suffering harm. In this paper, we extend the economic theory of law enforcement by modeling victims as an active party in criminal deterrence. First, they may take some precautions to avoid victimization. Second, they may or may not report their victimization. The lack of reporting weakens law enforcement and criminal deterrence by reducing detection rates. This suggests that victims could be encouraged to report by being paid a compensation. Nevertheless, compensating victims certainly reduces precaution. We argue that such effect never offsets the gains obtained in terms of criminal detection and apprehension. Received: December 1998 / Accepted: January 2000     

Does age structure forecast economic growth?

Increases in the proportion of the working age population can yield a “demographic dividend” that enhances the rate of economic growth. We estimate the parameters of an economic growth model using a cross section of countries over the period 1960 to 1980, and investigate whether the inclusion of age structure improves the model's forecasts for the period 1980 to 2000. We find that including the age structure improves the forecast, although there is evidence of parameter instability between periods with an unexplained growth slowdown in the second period. We use the model to generate growth forecasts for the period 2000 to 2020.     

Subprime lending and the housing bubble: Tail wags dog?

The cause of the “housing bubble” associated with the sharp rise and then drop in home prices over the period 1998–2008 has been the focus of significant policy and research attention. The dramatic increase in subprime lending during this period has been broadly blamed for these market dynamics. In this paper we empirically investigate the validity of this hypothesis vs. several other alternative explanations. A model of house price dynamics over the period 1998–2006 is specified and estimated using a cross-sectional time-series data base across 20 metropolitan areas over the period 1998–2006. Results suggest that prior to early 2004, economic fundamentals provide the primary explanation for house price dynamics. Subprime credit activity does not seem to have had much impact on subsequent house price returns at any time during the observation period, although there is strong evidence of a price-boosting effect by investor loans. However, we do find strong evidence that a credit regime shift took place in late 2003, as the GSE’s were displaced in the market by private issuers of new mortgage products. Market fundamentals became insignificant in affecting house price returns, and the price-momentum conditions characteristic of a “bubble” were created. Thus, rather than causing the run-up in house prices, the subprime market may well have been a joint product, along with house price increases, (i.e., the “tail”) of the changing institutional, political, and regulatory environment characteristic of the period after late 2003 (the “dog”).     

An Integrated Dynamic Model of Road Traffic Congestion Based on Simple Car-Following Theory: Exploring Hypercongestion

This paper presents a dynamic version of the standard static economic model of road traffic congestion, based on car-following theory. It is proven formally and illustrated numerically that the “hypercongested” equilibria found in the standard model are dynamically unstable. For arrival rates of users below the road's maximum capacity, the model reproduces the non-hypercongested stationary state outcomes found in the standard model. When the arrival rate exceeds this maximum capacity, however, the model produces outcomes consistent with Vickrey's model of bottleneck congestion. The model thus offers an integration and a generalization of these two archetype models.     

Knotting the action net, or organizing between organizations

This paper presents a study of a successful organizing process, namely the knotting together of different types of action by “translating” them into one another. The connections thus established were then stabilized to form a unit that can be designated as an “action net”. This instance of organizing occurred in the course of a project in the Swedish health care sector, with a view to establishing coordination between care units in three separate organizations. Different laws regulated their tasks, their operations were financed by different principals, and the everyday work of their members was undertaken at different point in time and in different places. Despite this, the participants in the studied project were able to establish a lasting net of connections that contributed, in the eyes of the environment, to an instance of “good care”. In this paper we examine in detail the creation of an action net, and offer a tentative theory of organizing in action nets.     

A Simple Test for Convergence of Metropolitan Income in the United States

The prevalent test for income convergence used in many recent studies of convergence across spatial economic units in the United States is to use a regression equation in which income growth is regressed against the initial level of income (this is known as β convergence). That method, however, has been crtiticized as an instance of Galton's fallacy of regression. We devise a simple test for the income β-convergence hypothesis which does not suffer from “Galton's fallacy” and apply it to all of the metropolitan areas of the United States for the period 1969–1995. For the test we use two income measures: per capita personal income and average wages. Our results conclusively support convergence of per capita personal income and of wage per worker for metropolitan areas in the United States. We also test for σ convergence, the hypothesis of diminishing dispersion in income among places over time, and find no support for the hypothesis.     

Household search and health insurance coverage

Health insurance in the United States is typically acquired through an employer-sponsored program. Often employees offered employer-provided health insurance have the option to extend coverage to their spouse and dependents. We investigate the implications of the “publicness” of health insurance coverage for the labor market careers of spouses. The theoretical innovations in the paper are to extend the standard partial–partial equilibrium labor market search model to a multiple searcher setting with the inclusion of multi-attribute job offers, with some of the attributes treated as public goods within the household. The model is estimated using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) using a Method of Simulated Moments (MSM) estimator. We demonstrate how previous estimates of the marginal willingness to pay (MWP) for health insurance based on cross-sectional linear regression estimators may be seriously biased due to the presence of dynamic selection effects and misspecification of the decision-making unit.     

A model of residential change and neighborhood tipping

This paper applies the theory of probabilistic consumer demand to an analysis of residential change at the urban neighborhood scale. By developing the profit maximizing pricing behavior of housing suppliers, it is shown that neighborhood transitions from high income to low income and from white to black can be explained on purely economic grounds without involving prejudicial preferences. The analytical model explains two types of transition. In the first, a neighborhood's social mix changes gradually in response to gradual exogenous changes. In the second, a neighborhood “tips” suddenly in response to similar exogenous changes. The two transitions can occur depending on the characteristics of the demand functions for the two competing groups.     

Intertemporal price–quality discrimination and the Coase conjecture

We examine time-consistent intertemporal price–quality discrimination by a durable goods monopolist, when there are a continuum of buyer demand-intensities with respect to product quality, and it is profitable for the monopolist to trade with the marginal buyer-type (i.e., the “gap” case). We show that along every subgame perfect equilibrium path, with probability 1, prices and qualities decline over time, and the market is completely and monotonically depleted according to buyer-type in a finite number of offers. But, unlike the fixed quality literature, the monopolist may randomize over price–quality offers along the equilibrium path. We also show that the Coase conjecture continues to be valid here, but in a form that is significantly different from the usual formulation. In the limit, as the time between offers evaporates, the monopolist makes a continuum of offers and perfectly screens the market. However, he effectively cannot price-discriminate, because the equilibrium profits converge to the complete “pooling” profits that would be made if the entire market had the marginal buyer-type’s valuation.     

An engineering approach to LSE modelling of experience curves in the electricity supply industry

This review is a supplement to the paper by Sharp and Price (1990) and should be regarded as an alternative engineering approach to the modelling and forecasting of experience, or learning, curves. It highlights the problems associated with accurately defining a model to time series that show a combination of a continuous trend and a cyclical component, as detected by the authors in the Sharp and Price data. The authors give a number of alternative perspectives of the same time series, in this case average thermal efficiency data from the U.K. electricity supply industry, with the corresponding conclusions associated with each approach. Particular attention is drawn to the use of the “time constant learning curve” quoted by Sharp and Price which the authors show is a reasonable predictor of the average thermal efficiency. However, a tremendous improvement results from selecting the “ripple” model as a thermal efficiency predictor.     

Use transnational teams to globalize your company

The authors report on their two-year study of successful transnational teams, in which they examined how such teams are designed and managed to help their firms pursue global business strategies. Based on this study, they present a comprehensive model of team effectiveness that includes the key characteristics differentiating a transnational team from other types of work teams. The model shows how transnational teams operate—how they are staffed and led, communicate across great distances, and cope with cross-cultural issues. In closing, they describe how a company's human resources department can help an “international” or “multinational” team become a “transnational” team—one that has successfully transcended the cultural, geographic, and managerial barriers to team effectiveness.     

A fuzzy-QFD approach to supplier selection

This article suggests a new method that transfers the house of quality (HOQ) approach typical of quality function deployment (QFD) problems to the supplier selection process. To test its efficacy, the method is applied to a supplier selection process for a medium-to-large industry that manufactures complete clutch couplings.The study starts by identifying the features that the purchased product should have (internal variables “WHAT”) in order to satisfy the company's needs, then it seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria (external variables “HOW”) in order to come up with a final ranking based on the fuzzy suitability index (FSI). The whole procedure was implemented using fuzzy numbers; the application of a fuzzy algorithm allowed the company to define by means of linguistic variables the relative importance of the “WHAT”, the “HOW”–“WHAT” correlation scores, the resulting weights of the “HOW” and the impact of each potential supplier.Special attention is paid to the various subjective assessments in the HOQ process, and symmetrical triangular fuzzy numbers are suggested to capture the vagueness in people's verbal assessments.     

Currency boards, credibility and crises

The paper calls into question the proposition that currency boards are a solution in preventing currency crisis. On the basis of a “second generation” model, it shows that, in the presence of unemployment persistence, a currency board system can become vulnerable to a currency crisis, as well. The model underlies the role played in triggering the crisis both by expectations of exchange rate realignments and by fundamentals. As the persistence of unemployment has a feedback effect on subsequent periods’ expectations, the credibility of a currency board may decrease over time, eventually inducing a self-fulfilling crisis.     

Developing breakthrough products: challenges and options for market assessment

Competitive pressures and market forces are augmenting the importance of product innovation as a source of competitive advantage. Key drivers underpinning market success have the capacity to develop the “right” products for the “right” customers, using the “right” channels, with a shorter development cycle than competitors. But when breakthrough products (BTPs) are involved, how do we sort out what is “right”? How do we identify customers' future requirements when the technology platforms are still unfolding, products are still in development and customers lack experience with the product? Traditional product development market research techniques are problematic since they assume the customer has historical experience with products similar to those being created. The objective of this paper is to raise the awareness of the OM community with the strengths and weaknesses of existing methodologies for developing and introducing innovative products to market. Further, it suggests promising future directions for both practice and research when BTPs are involved. This is important because of the central role OM plays in managing the success of the BTP development process.     

After the economic crisis of 2008: Economic conditions and crime in the last decade for the case of Spain

The economic approach to crime confirms that the deterioration of economic conditions influences the motivation of potential offenders to commit a crime or not. The relationship between crime and the economy status received considerable attention among the international literature. However, in Spain, there are just few studies that analyse this connection, and those that analyse the influence of the deterioration of the economy on crime after the crisis that began in 2008 are practically non-existent. In order to fill this gap, this research applies the difference-GMM estimator for a sample of 47 provinces during the 2010–2018 period and controls the influence of different economic, demographic and dissuasive factors on the crime rate. The results obtained are similar to those of different investigations, since in the face of worsening economic conditions, no evidence of a positive and uniform effect on the crime rate is detected, especially when it differs according to different types of crimes possible. However, that relationship does exist and is robust in property crimes. Another common result in the empirical literature is also confirmed: adolescent male cohorts present the highest crime rates.     

INSTITUTIONALISED JUSTIFICATION OF CORPORATE ACTION: INTERNATIONALISATION AND THE EU IN CORPORATE REPORTS

This paper provides an institutional analysis of the way a set of Finnish firms have used the concept of internationalisation and the EU in justifying major strategic decisions. They have used internationalisation, and in particular the then new possibility of Finland joining the EU, as an argument in support of radical change. An analysis of their annual reports reveals a number of institutional arguments which are strong because they are generally accepted, a priori, as being important not only to firms but indeed to Finland as a whole. In using institutional arguments firms are aligning their own interests with those of the country, and in so doing are able to justify radical changes in most parts of their own organisations. We are not claiming that Finnish firms should not react to the challenges which EU represents. Rather, we suggest that by using institutional arguments they are borrowing legitimacy from a wider public. The arguments used are typically very broad, invoking very general visions of the role of Finland in the EU. We call these arguments “easy rides” because, even if they are only partially explicated, it is generally assumed that they will become accepted without questioning by public and employees alike. Certain specific patterns of “easy rides” can be distinguished: i) The mobilisation of a “national mission”, ii) “Sacrifice now, reap the benefit later”, and iii) “Bigger is better”. The paper concludes with a methodological discussion about the difficulty of distinguishing between the technical/functional and the institutional arguments.     

Towards an holistic understanding of disruptions in Operations Management

The paper reviews the literature on maintenance management, integrates key dimensions of maintenance within a taxonomy of maintenance configurations, and explores the impact of differing configurations on contextual factors and operational performance. “Prevention”, “hard maintenance integration” and “soft maintenance integration” were identified as key maintenance variables. Data were collected from 253 Swedish manufacturing companies, and three distinct clusters were identified. “Proactive Maintainers” emphasized preventive maintenance policies. “IT Maintainers” relied on computerized and company-wide integrated information systems for maintenance. “Maintenance Laggers” emphasized all maintenance dimensions to lesser extent than the others. The importance of maintenance prevention and integration differ between contexts. There were subtle performance differences across identified configurations, but preventive and integrated maintenance were more important for companies seeking competitive process control and flexibility. There existed no group with any great emphasis on all three maintenance dimensions, but attaining truly high performance may require a rare mix of the three dimensions. This mix of variables could constitute a hypothesized “World Class Maintenance” group.