Drop In Crime In New York City Economic Analysis :1990-2005

According to FBI statistics, crime in New York City took a downturn starting around 1990 that continued for many years, shattering all the city's old records for consecutive year declines in crime rates.Something must happened in New York City since 1990:a lot of people stopped committing crimes, not only property crimes but also violent crimes. While not unprecedented was extraordinary, Since 1994, a debate has raged about why this happened.Since Berck published (1968) his ground-breaking work on the economics of crime, economists have expanded upon both the theory and the empirical analysis of crime. According to the standard theoretical framework. Optimizing individuals engage in criminal activities depending upon the expected payoffs of the criminal activity. The return to legal labor market, tastes, and the costs of criminal activity. Such those associated with apprehension, conviction and punishment. Excellent reviews of the literature appear in Chiricos(1987). While such studies reports evidence that increases in criminal justice sanctions reduce criminal activity.The purpose of this study is to provide new and potentially more refined evidence on the crime-deterrence relationship using a unique data set. Which consists of yearly observations in New York City for nearly sixteen years. The corresponding arrests, the size of the police force,and the legal market opportunities we used in this papers. We also use recent advances in time-series econometrics to test and correct for problems that may have contaminated the results of previous time-series analyses of crime. We find robust evidence for the deterrent effects of arrests and police on most categories of serious felony offenses.