TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2019//
TI  - Exploring causal relationship between Major League Baseball games and crime: a synthetic control analysis
JO  - Empirical economics
A1  - Pyun, Hyunwoong
SP  - 365
EP  - 383
VL  - 57
IS  - 1
N2  - Using the Washington Nationals case, which moved from Montreal, Canada, to Washington, DC in 2005, as a natural experiment, I examine the impact of MLB games on crime in a host city. To address endogeneity concerns, this paper applies a synthetic control method with using 21 large cities which host an MLB team as a "donor pool" and employs a triple difference-in-difference approach to estimate the change in crime before and after the Nationals coming, between MLB season and off-season, and Washington, DC and the synthetic Washington. With using monthly crime data from the Uniform Crime Report, only assaults increased by 7-7.5% annually after the Nationals moved to DC; other crimes were unchanged. This result is supported by statistical significance and in-space placebo tests, and several alternative specifications in robustness check. These increases in assaults could be associated with additional costs, annually from $20 to $35 million. Little to no evidence of a causal relationship between MLB games and other types of crime.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0377-7332
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-018-1440-9
ID  - ref1
ER  -