Kevin Hasset, director of economic policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute, and Rob Schapiro, chairman of economic advisory firm Sonecon, dove through new crime data from police departments and home prices collected by DataQuick and Zillow ($33.50 0%)in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Seattle.

Murder, rape, assault and robberies have are costly for victims and the surrounding community. But Hasset and Schapiro also found a stark correlation to home values. On average, a reduction of one homicide in a ZIP Code for a given year generates a 1.52% increase in home prices the next year, according to their analysis.

“The basic idea is that crime has a big negative effect on property values and if you do a cost benefit analysis it will be a good investment and the impact on home values is statistically significant and very large,” Hasset said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.

Since the crisis struck in 2007, American homeowners have lost more than $7 trillion in home equity, according to Federal Reserve data. This drives up the likelihood of default, reduces the amount of possible homes for sale and constricts demand.

But 2010 marked the fourth consecutive year of violent crime declines, dropping another 6% from the previous year, according to FBI data.

According to the study, just a 10% reduction violent crimes for these eight major cities during 2010, would have meant a roughly 0.8% increase in prices (click on the chart below to expand).

Marc Moriel, president of the National Urban League, said between 1994 and 2002, violent crimes in New Orleans dropped by 60%. The results were apparent not just for potential victims but for the overall economy, which could incite more investments and renewed focus in areas long ignored.

“The reality of violent crime and the perception on those numbers has been a drag on private investment and business expansion and a drag on the hospitality and tourism sector of our economy,” said Moriel, a former mayor of New Orleans. “When we made investments to crack down on violent crimes, home values improved. The tourist economy dramatically expanded.”

We all spend a large amount of our time verbally communicating with others. We’re trying to get messages across to family, friends, clients, colleagues, employees, or supervisors. We invest a lot of our time crafting correspondence to be heard and noticed. We plan questions and presentations, construct our delivery and view, develop objectives and expectations. With so much of our time spent communicating, our goal should be to achieve effectiveness with brevity.

Brevity is a skill that far too few people understand. Brevity is the ability to convey your intended message in the fewest words possible to achieve the greatest impact.

Some people have the gift of gab, and many people’s natural reaction to someone who is talkative, or even verbose, is to believe they are a wonderful communicator. It’s the salespeople we meet with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for their product or service, who talk fast and think on their feet. These people have probably had a lot of people tell them that they’re such a good talker that they could “sell ice to an Eskimo.” At times, this gift of gab is disguising the curse of being overbearing and lacking in listening skills.

Inevitably, the gift of gab will extend meetings, gather less information than we need, and be less effective in listening, and we will invest more phone time to achieve the same result. This takes away from time spent working on real goals and objectives.

In order to invest less time in communication, you have to be able to direct the communication through the veritable maze of issues, challenges, and distractions that happen. When we engage in leading and guiding through the use of questions, we can control a conversation. Some might not like the word “control” when linked with conversation, so use the word “guide” if that seems more palatable for you.

Whoever asks the questions and asks more questions is always in control of the conversation. Whoever asks the question is also the one gaining the insight, the edge, the upper hand, and all other factors we all desire. Some of us struggle with asking the first question, but most of us struggle asking the second, third, fourth, or fifth.

My wife Joan has always been less likely to ask questions because her grandmother discouraged her by calling her Nosey Josie! What was once an inquisitive mind wanting to learn and ask questions was diminished by the careless words of a loved one. Maybe you were summarily discouraged by a loved one to lessen your curiosity.

By focusing on someone else and keeping them talking, we can gather more useful information. We use that information to be more effective.

We should encourage people to talk through questions. The truth is, people like to talk about their favorite subjects — themselves. When we ask a simple set of questions, we can glean a large amount of valuable information about them, their business, how they make decisions, what’s important to them, their business relationships, their goals, their objectives, their strategic thrusts, their projects, their spouses, and their kids.

People love to talk about almost anything that is happening in their lives, whether it’s family, business, or leisure activities. By asking questions we can really learn what they are thinking and feeling. We can also learn what their needs, wants, and desires are in life. What motivates them to take action to make decisions a certain way? We can identify problems and challenges that they are experiencing. This creates opportunities for us to solve problems and serve them. It might help us to discover new business opportunities for ourselves.

The old adage that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason is true. We must learn to listen twice as much as we speak. Doing so we will reduce the amount of time we invest with others to achieve results for them and ourselves. When we monopolize conversations, we’re often looked upon as boorish. When we ask questions and engage people by getting them to talk about themselves, we are a brilliant conversationalist.

Because pigs seem to produce more edible meat per pound of feed than do other four-footed animals, we’ve found that the critters represent a relatively secure and profitable homestead investment. As an added advantage, the porkers — if the need arises — can be butchered at any age, without regard to their stage of growth and meat preparedness.
We became concerned, however, that our swine were able to wallow idly during a good part of the year, while the grain they consumed was costing us more by the month. In fact, our frustration over rising feed costs inspired us to start thumbing through back issues of MOTHER EARTH NEWS and scanning the feed grain sections of seed catalogs in search of some money-saving alternatives.

How to Save Money While Raising Pigs

Our solution was developed (after a good bit of head scratching) from ideas we found in Gary Nelson’s article “Pigs Plow My Garden,” which suggests putting the animals’ snouts to work as rototillers and in an R.H. Shumway Seeds catalog, which listed an “Annual Hog Pasture Mixture” containing 11 different seed varieties (field peas, soybeans, hairy vetch, clover, rape, sorghum, millet, turnips, barley, oats, and rutabagas) that are ready for grazing in six weeks.
We concluded, therefore, that if we set aside some pasture for pork, our pigs’ grain consumption would be less for at least six months of the year. Also, as they ate, the animals would automatically “till” the fields for subsequent plantings. The idea became even more appealing when we realized that pasturing pigs, whether young stock or pregnant sows, makes excellent nutritional sense. It seems that most green foods — especially grasses — provide carotene, which is converted to vitamin A and stored in the liver. Shortages of this vitamin may cause piglets to be stillborn or to die shortly afterbirth. (Furthermore, if pigs receive only the bare minimum requirement of vitamin A, they may still suffer a retardation of growth: In a short time the pig’s head becomes too large in proportion to its body.)