The Economics of Anti‐Begging Regulations

A bstract The Supreme Court has ruled that asking for money is a form of protected speech. However, it has also ruled that restrictions on the time, place, and manner of begging are constitutional. This paper examines 71 U.S. cities to determine what factors influence a city's propensity to enact anti‐begging regulations. The logistic regression results indicate that cities with higher welfare benefits are less likely to regulate begging. Cities with higher crime rates, higher proportions of disabled citizens, and higher proportions of college‐educated citizens, and cities that are more densely populated are more likely to regulate begging. While historians, ethnographers, and legal scholars have studied issues related to begging, economists generally have not. This paper uses the traditional economic model of rational choice to examine why some U.S. cities regulate begging and others do not.