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We examine the eect of medical marijuana laws (MML) on crime treating the introduction of MML as a quasi-experiment and using three dierent data sources. First, using data from the Uniform Crime Reports, we nd that violent crimes such as homicides and robberies decrease in states that border Mexico after MML are introduced. Second, using Supplementary Homicide Reports' data we show that for homicides the decrease is the result of a drop in drug-law and juvenile-gang related homicides. Lastly, using STRIDE data, we show that the introduction of MML in Mexican border states decreases the amount of cocaine seized, while it increases the price of cocaine. Our results are consistent with the theory that decriminalization of small-scale production and distribution of marijuana harms Mexican drug tracking organizations, whose revenues are highly reliant on marijuana sales. The drop in drug-related crimes suggests that the introduction of MML in Mexican border states lead to a decrease in their activity in those states. Our results survive a large variety of robustness checks. Extrapolating from our results, this indicates that decriminalization of the production and distribution of drugs may lead to a drop in violence in markets where organized crime is pushed out by licit competition. * Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. "They erect this fence," he said, "only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they're inging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side." He paused and looked at me for a second. "A catapult," he repeated. "We've got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology." New York Times, Keefe (2012)

This paper analyzes the relationship between youth unemployment and Palestinian violence. First a qualitative explanation of the underlying mechanism is given. Eventually, empirical results suggest that there is a positive association between the growth rate of youth unemployment and the brutality and incidence of violence, proxied by the numbers of victims, and incidents. Results also show that: (i) there is a negative association between the added value in the agricultural sector and both measures of violence; (ii) there is a positive association between the share of employment in agriculture and violence; (iii) there is a negative association between manufacturing added value and brutality of incidents. Results also suggest that male youth unemployment rather than female unemployment helps to explain Palestinian violence.

There is little research on the gender variation in the crime market. We document a gender gap in criminal activities, based on property crimes, using data from the U.S. National Incident Based Reporting System from 1995 to 2015. We show that there is a gender participation gap, with only 30 percent of the crimes being committed by females. We try to explain the gender participation gap by focusing on incentives to commit crime, such as criminal earnings and probability of arrest. We show that on average females earn 13 percent less than males while they face a 9 percent lower likelihood of arrest. We find that males respond more to changes in illegal earnings, with an elasticity of 0.36, while females are less responsive with an elasticity of 0.23. Both genders respond equally to changes in the probability of arrest, with an elasticity around -0.14. Using a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition technique, we find that differences in incentives explain about 8 percent of the gender participation gap, while differences in responsiveness to changes in incentives, especially illegal earnings, explain about 56 percent of the gap. The fact that females behave differently than males has implications for the heterogeneity in response to crime control policies.1 Henceforth, we will refer to these crime rates as participation rates. 2 In the standard economic model of crime both higher earnings and a lower arrest probability can persuade a criminal to commit a crime. Therefore, we will refer to these two variables as criminal incentives. The probability of arrest deters criminals, generating a negative incentive rather than a positive one. In our model, we allow males and females to respond differently to these incentives.

Abstract"We"explore"the"impact"of"the"insurgency"and"military"deployment"on"the" livelihoods"of"local"communities"in"Afghanistan."We"use"monthly"wages"and" commodity" prices" at" the" provincial" level" over" the" period" 2003P2009" and" look"for"their"response"to"conflict"events"and"ISAF"deployment."Overall"we" find" that" prices" are" more" sensitive" to" deployment" than" to" attacks." Commodity" prices" are" not" significantly" affected" by" insurgent" violence," consistent"with"coping"strategies"already"in"place."On"the"opposite,"military" deployment" is" associated" with" an" increase" in" the" levels" of" wages" and" commodity"prices,"as"ISAF"is"a"new"source"of"uncertainty."

I identify a discriminatory bias in partnership formation within the property crime market in the United States. Theoretically, the prisoner's dilemma creates an incentive for a criminal to form a partnership with a counterpart with the same probability of success, resulting in an equilibrium pattern of positive assortative matching. Using individual matched report-arrest data from the National Incident Based Reporting System and a novel empirical strategy, I pinpoint matches where the underlying probability of success of two partners di er. This di erence in probability is correlated with observable characteristics, which could be evidence for discrimination and search frictions. I nd patterns consistent with discrimination in male-female partnerships and patterns consistent with search frictions in black-white matches. In particular, females in a male-female partnership are more likely to evade law-enforcement than males, even though on average males are more successful as a group. This results is robust to controlling for the criminal earnings, individual criminal o enses and market characteristics. Furthermore, these patterns are found also in criminal groups of a size bigger than 2. The result could be either due to pre-crime marital matching or discrimination.

APPENDIX A: EXTENSIONSIN THIS APPENDIX, we consider three extensions to our main result derived in Section 2. The extensions are (i) supply-side instead of demand-side taxation, (ii) nonlinear, instead of ad valorum taxation, and (iii) a setting with multiple goods and multiple taxes. A.1. Supply-Side TaxationTo extend our result to supply-side taxation, we again start out with the most general formulation of the supply-demand system given by equations (1), (2). However, we now assume the tax τ it is levied on the supply side. Because the tax is levied on the supply side, we need to slightly adjust the exclusion restrictions formulated in Section 2. In particular, in this setting, the logically equivalent SER is that the instrument can be excluded from the demand equation, because the tax is paid for by the supply side: SUPPLY-SIDE STANDARD EXCLUSION RESTRICTION:If the tax τ it is levied on the supply side, then we set γ = 0.The logical equivalent of the RER with supply-side taxation is that supply depends only on the price net of the tax rate denoted by P −τ it = (1 − τ it )P it . The motivation for the supply-side RER is similar to the motivation of the demand-side RER: it follows from rational behavior of producers, and is a standard assumption in most models of taxation. Under the supply-side RER, the supply equation is given by y it = ε S p

We examine the eect of medical marijuana laws (MML) on crime treating the introduction of MML as a quasi-experiment and using three dierent data sources. First, using data from the Uniform Crime Reports, we nd that violent crimes such as homicides and robberies decrease in states that border Mexico after MML are introduced. Second, using Supplementary Homicide Reports' data we show that for homicides the decrease is the result of a drop in drug-law and juvenile-gang related homicides. Lastly, using STRIDE data, we show that the introduction of MML in Mexican border states decreases the amount of cocaine seized, while it increases the price of cocaine. Our results are consistent with the theory that decriminalization of small-scale production and distribution of marijuana harms Mexican drug tracking organizations, whose revenues are highly reliant on marijuana sales. The drop in drug-related crimes suggests that the introduction of MML in Mexican border states lead to a decrease in their activity in those states. Our results survive a large variety of robustness checks. Extrapolating from our results, this indicates that decriminalization of the production and distribution of drugs may lead to a drop in violence in markets where organized crime is pushed out by licit competition. * Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. "They erect this fence," he said, "only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they're inging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side." He paused and looked at me for a second. "A catapult," he repeated. "We've got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology." New York Times, Keefe (2012)