Lecture versus evidence
This is a seminar note. Becker Outcome Test develops one identification method; Crime and Race hold wider policing debates. When reusing a number or causal claim from the lecture, follow its cited paper or dataset rather than treating the recap as independent verification.
Roland Fryer in seminar at UATX: The Truth About Policing in America - YouTube
- Less progress in wages black/white than thought 1960-2004
- Black white range gap hasn’t changed in the 50th percentile
- Bell shaped distribution, just pulled out. Top has gotten better, bottom has gotten worse.
- Committing a crime is a rational decision according to economists
- Gary Becker — Economist
- A Theory of Marriage
- You have to have some model of human behavior
- Becker’s (1968) seminal work seeks to show that crime can be modeled as rational, utility-moximizing behavior
- Economic incentives to engage in criminal activity
- Four Parts of Crime
- Expected Financial Gain
- Expected Legal Sanction
- Psychic Cost
- Expected Income from Legitimate job (Opportunity Cost)
- Black students receive a higher return on investment than white students yet they invest less
- Economics is clarifying, but doesn’t make everything clear
- People are maximizing their utility
- Formula for Crime
- Marginal determinence; different punishment between murder and a stoplight
- Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach on JSTOR
- Becker Outcome Test
- On_Outcome_Tests_of_Bias.pdf
- Look at the outcome and judge based on those results
- Example:
- 68% of stops are black motorist, which are 18% of population. But the outcome of these stops are equal, in that the result of getting illegal items are the same. So in proportion, their getting illegal items equally in both. The police are maximizing their likelihood of finding illegal items. It’d be bias if they searched 50% white 50% black or if only got a return of 10% while search 68% of black cars, and 50% of the time for 30% of white cars. Police would need to search white cars more to maximize their returns.
- How Gary Becker Saw the Scourge of Discrimination | Chicago Booth Review
- Mortgage Discrimination
- Not found of likely hood of getting loan
- Look to if people defaulted on loans
- How Much Does Racial Bias Affect Mortgage Lending? Evidence from Human and Algorithmic Credit Decisions | Federal Reserve
- Florida was found to not searching enough black cars to maximize
- Economist view is profiling is efficient; their rational responses
- Every disparity isn’t bias
- People get annoyed at random testing, they’d want it to be more targeted. Think of TSA patting down a 98 year old lady.
- Police Use of Force
- empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf
- NYPD Stop and Frisk
- Not discrimination
- High productivity
- Blacks are 20%+ more likely to get use of force against them
- IF you don’t believe you’ll be safe from police, it’s hard to believe in the other tenets
- Wants to use AI on bodycams to help police
References
twitter.com/TheFP/status/1758247853351174268
Roland Fryer on 4 Things that would Fundamentally Change Racial Inequality
Broken windows theory - Wikipedia