Bocar Ba
Biographic Data
| ID | 3960536 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bocar Ba |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bocar |
| FAMILY NAME | Ba |
| SIGNATURE | BA B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0685-7975 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Effect of Police Oversight on Crime and Misconduct Allegations
Does police oversight increase crime? Studies examining this relationship often rely on major scandals as shocks, but the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates the results. Using a framework distinguishing oversight and outrage, we identify two events that increased oversight but elicited no public reaction. We find that despite a subsequent decline in reported misconduct, these oversight increases likel…
Political diversity in U.S. police agencies
Partisans are divided on policing policy, which may affect officer behavior. We merge rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies—over one third of local law enforcement agents nationwide—with voter files to study police partisanship. Police skew more Republican than their jurisdictions, with notable exceptions. Using fine‐grained data in Chicago and Houston, we compare behavior of Democratic and Republican officers facing common circu…
The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations
There is evidence showing racial bias in firms’ hiring decisions, but less is known about bias in career recognition. We construct a dataset from the second-largest US police department to estimate the Black-white gap in award nominations. Leveraging institutional features, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate Black officers conditional on work performance. This appears to be driven by supervisor bias in advocacy decisions r…
JUE Insight
The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago
Diversity in policing In the wake of high-profile police shootings of Black Americans, it is important to know whether the race and gender of officers and civilians affect their interactions. Ba et al. overcame previous data constraints and found that Hispanic and Black officers make far fewer stops and arrests and use force less than white officers, especially against Black civilians. These differences are largest in majority-Black neighborhoods…
Conservatisme, féodalité, système des castes en Mauritanie. Pour un regard lucide
The Economics of Policing and Public Safety
The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime-reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of polic…
The Economics of Policing and Public Safety
The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime-reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of polic…
The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago
Diversity in policing In the wake of high-profile police shootings of Black Americans, it is important to know whether the race and gender of officers and civilians affect their interactions. Ba et al. overcame previous data constraints and found that Hispanic and Black officers make far fewer stops and arrests and use force less than white officers, especially against Black civilians. These differences are largest in majority-Black neighborhoods…
Conservatisme, féodalité, système des castes en Mauritanie. Pour un regard lucide
The Economics of Policing and Public Safety
The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime-reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of polic…
The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations
There is evidence showing racial bias in firms’ hiring decisions, but less is known about bias in career recognition. We construct a dataset from the second-largest US police department to estimate the Black-white gap in award nominations. Leveraging institutional features, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate Black officers conditional on work performance. This appears to be driven by supervisor bias in advocacy decisions r…
JUE Insight
Political diversity in U.S. police agencies
Partisans are divided on policing policy, which may affect officer behavior. We merge rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies—over one third of local law enforcement agents nationwide—with voter files to study police partisanship. Police skew more Republican than their jurisdictions, with notable exceptions. Using fine‐grained data in Chicago and Houston, we compare behavior of Democratic and Republican officers facing common circu…
The Effect of Police Oversight on Crime and Misconduct Allegations
Does police oversight increase crime? Studies examining this relationship often rely on major scandals as shocks, but the simultaneous effect of public outrage on officer behavior and crime contaminates the results. Using a framework distinguishing oversight and outrage, we identify two events that increased oversight but elicited no public reaction. We find that despite a subsequent decline in reported misconduct, these oversight increases likel…
Political science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Officer (5 works) · Criminology (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (3 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · Regulation and Compliance Studies (3 works) · Business (2 works)