ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between safety and economic activity for 48 large cities. The approach is inspired by the "environmental Kuznetz curve" literature where an inverted U relationship is hypothesized to exist between pollution and economic activity (Grossman and Krueger, 1995). There are a number of similarities between pollution and safety in that there are drivers that potentially can make both worse with increased economic activity, but that increased wealth also gives stronger incentives and ability to address the issues. The chapter recognizes that there exist a number of extensions of Grossman and Krueger (1995), including building a firmer theoretical foundation, a substantial focus on the importance of trade and a decomposition of the total effect to scale, technology and composition of economic activity (Antweiler et al., 2001).
