On terror, drugs and racial profiling

We show that for racial profiling (defined as policy rules that employ statistical discrimination based on racial attributes) to be efficient in fighting ordinary crime, it needs to focus on the racial composition of marginal offenders. Efficiency thus may counter-intuitively call for targeting the group with the lower offending rates. In the context of terror, however, it has to be based primarily on differences in offending rates across racial population groups (group-wise averages). We demonstrate that, assuming correlation between race and crime, racial profiling would nearly always be efficient. Finally, we discuss equity considerations and suggest that if awarding compensation is perceived to be a viable policy option, it should be paid on an ex ante basis.     

Dataset of Digitized RACs and Their Rarity Score Analysis for Strengthening Shoeprint Evidence

In recent years, there is a growing demand to fortify the scientific basis of forensic methodology. During 2016, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) published a report that states there are no appropriate empirical studies that support the foundational validity of footwear analysis to associate shoeprints with particular shoes based on specific identifying marks, which is a basic scientific demand from the field. Furthermore, meaningful databases that can support such studies do not exist. Without such databases, statistical presentation of the comparison results cannot be fulfilled either. In this study, a database of over 13,000 randomly acquired characteristics (RACs) such as scratches, nicks, tears, and holes, as they appear on shoe sole test impressions, from nearly 400 shoe soles was collected semi-automatically. The location, orientation, and the contour of each RAC were determined for all the RACs on each test impression. The statistical algorithm Statistic Evaluation of Shoeprint Accidentals (SESA) was developed to calculate a score for finding another feature similar to a particular scanned and digitized RAC in the same shape, location, and orientation as the examined one. A correlation was found between the results of SESA and the results of real casework, strengthening our belief in the ability of SESA to assist the expert in reaching a conclusion while performing casework. The score received at the end of the process serves the expert as a guiding number, allowing more objective and accurate results and conclusions.     

From the Outside Looking In: The Effect of Trading Blocs on Trade Disputes in the GATT/WTO

The increasing number and expansion of trading blocs is an important dimension of the contemporary international economy. This study examines the effects of such trading blocs on third parties and on the multilateral trading system. It is argued that trading blocs have negative economic effects on economic sectors in non-members' states. These sectors urge their governments to take political action vis-à-vis the trading bloc. Governments have several policy choices on their menu, and the attractiveness of these policies is determined by domestic and international incentives and constraints. I argue that filing a complaint in the GATT/WTO is an attractive and effective policy tool in the hands of third parties' governments. Thus, I hypothesize that the existence, deepening, and widening of trading blocs result in an increase in the number of complaints filed against their members in the multilateral trading system. I examine these propositions in the context of three important trading blocs—namely, the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur—in the period 1948–2000. To test these hypotheses a time-series cross-section count model is performed. Controlling for conventional alternative explanations, the empirical analysis supports the theoretical framework.     

Looking at Prediction from an Economics Perspective: A Response to Harcourt's Against Prediction

This article discusses Bernard E. Harcourt's Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age (2007 ). The book opposes the use of probabilistic methods, such as profiling, on efficiency, equity, and jurisprudence grounds. By contrast I argue that profiling is always efficient, that there is no theoretical flaw in reliance on actuarial methods, as long as they are implemented properly. I also show that the equity-based criticism of reliance on actuarial methods (Harcourt's ratchet effect argument) is based on two questionable assumptions: that profiling is perfectly efficient (as zero deterrence is assumed), and that the police are making an obvious logical mistake, by gradually increasing the extent to which they target the group with the higher offending rate instead of targeting only them in the first place.