Valuing Proactive Policing: A Hedonic Analysis of Stop & Frisk's Amenity Value

Abstract

This paper measures the value households place on street-level intensive policing practices. It utilizes a large, spatially detailed data set that includes more than one hundred thousand real property sales and four million police-citizen encounters in New York City from 2006-2012. A hedonic analysis of this data shows that the New York Police Department's practice of Stop, Question & Frisk policing was likely seen as a neighborhood dis-amenity by home buyers. Using finely partitioned geographical areas to control for variation in omitted variables and precise spatial statistics describing location relative to surrounding amenities and dis-amenities, I find that properties exposed to more intense Stop & Frisk activity sold for significantly lower prices. In a novel application, this paper shows one way in which housing prices can be used to inform administrative policy related to the provision of public services.