A recent paper by David Kirk (PNAS, June 2, 2015) observes that following the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, prisoners on parole, who had been concentrated in a couple of parishes, were dispersed throughout the region. This means that after the hurricane, there were more parolees in some parishes and fewer in others. He argued that this was a natural experiment that exposes the causal relationship between parolee concentration and recidivis Required:
a. Briefly explain the economic model of crime and why it implies that if there are more ex-criminals in the area near where he or she lives, a recently released parolee is more likely to commit another crime and be sent back to prison. In a simple regression on this issue of this paper, what wou ld be the
b. Dependent variable Independent variable
c. Why would a simple regression of recidivism on the concentration of parolees in a parish produce biased results?