Background:

Insecurity is one of the scourges that most concern the inhabitants of Latin America, where violence and lack of security make it one of the most insecure regions in the world. Buenos Aires (Argentina) is not an exception to this phenomenon, given that its recent statistics show a growing trend of crimes against people. Poverty can provoke a greater virulence of crime, but the latter also entails social and economic costs that negatively impact welfare and poverty. This paper addresses this second relationship based on the study of changes in the urban configuration and its consequent impact on the welfare of households and firms due to the increase in crime in the city of Buenos Aires.

Methodology:

A computational general equilibrium model (CGE) with urban characteristics for Argentina was developed in 2011 in order to measure welfare changes, generated by the crime and the costs it generates on the real estate market. As real estate prices were the transmission mechanism between crime and welfare, elasticities were estimated between crime and the price of housing based on a hedonic econometric model.

Results:

Assuming a 10% increase in the crime rate, the prices of real estate in the relatively richer North of the city can fall to 4%, while they fall less than 1% in the South region. The net effect is a significant drop in the average value of real estate in the city, given that the North is where the most expensive properties are concentrated. These asymmetric results between zones of the city are also observed in the results of household welfare, reducing 8% in the North and 1% in the South. These results on property prices and households welfare induce the relocation of households to the South and of firms to the North, which alters the initial urban configuration. The results correspond with the findings for other cities in South America.

Conclusions:

An increase in crime in the city of Buenos Aires generates non-negligible welfare costs for families, which produces incentives for the relocation not only of families but also of firms. Consequently, the crime does not turn out to be neutral for the urban and regional configuration, given the interactions between the city of Buenos Aires and the rest of the country. Conclusions such as quantitative results are useful for the design of public policies related to local security and its impact on urban configuration.