Anti-Crime Laws and Retail Prices

Abstract

The fear of becoming a victim of crime acts like barriers to retail trade for consumers, where retailers attempt to reduce such barriers by enduring additional costs such as insurance or security/surveillance costs; as a result, retail prices are affected by the possibility of crime. This paper attempts to measure such effects by considering the recent experience of the County of Sacramento, where an anti-panhandling ordinance has been issued to protect the retailers. As an application, a difference-in-difference approach is employed to identify the effects of the ordinance on Sacramento gasoline prices at the retail level, by considering the gasoline prices in neighbor counties as the control group of a natural experiment. The results show that the anti-panhandling ordinance has resulted in lower gasoline prices in the County of Sacramento.

Keywords: Anti-Crime Laws; Gasoline Retail Prices; Gas-Station Level Analysis; County of Sacramento

JEL Classification: H73, K42