We are delighted to invite you to an insightful discussion on police organization and performance, featuring Arianna Ornaghi, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Hertie School.
Abstract from the speaker:
Do managers matter for law enforcement? This paper studies whether and how middle managers influence police performance, focusing on territorial policing within London. We construct a novel dataset that traces the career histories of middle managers and links them to division-by-month crime and clearance outcomes, using archival sources, administrative records, and Freedom of Information requests. We document an important role of middle managers in police performance: 8% of overall variation in log clearances is explained by managers. High-performing managers improve clearance rates across crime types, and enhance local deterrence by boosting proactive policing, as proxied by drug-related crime detection. They also deliver better outcomes while relying on fewer resources, particularly back-office staff. These findings suggest that internal organization can be a powerful tool for improving police performance, even in resource-constrained environments.
About the speaker:
Arianna Ornaghi is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Hertie School. Arianna is an applied microeconomist who specialises in empirical political economy. In particular, her research aims at improving our understanding of what forces influence the behaviour of public officials such as police officers and judges. Before joining the Hertie School, Arianna was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She earned a PhD in Economics from MIT in 2017 and holds BSc and MSc degrees in Economics and Social Sciences from Bocconi University.
Bring your own lunch bag! Light pastries and drinks will be available in case you forget to bring it.
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The Data Science Brown Bag Series is an informal and interactive gathering where participants bring their own brown bag lunch and engage in discussions on research and insights the field of data and computational social science (light pastries and drinks will be available if you forget your lunch bag!).
The series provides a platform for data enthusiasts, researchers, and practitioners to share their experiences, best practices, and emerging methodologies and research in using data science to analyze and understand social and political phenomena. The brown bag talk series is for anyone interested in data science and social science to network, learn, and share ideas in a casual and friendly setting.
