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We study whether economic incentives matter for crime in a novel way, through study of expensive precious metal thefts by thieves stealing catalytic converters. We combine sharp, plausibly exogenous variation in the pric...Read more...
Gerald Foong, Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi
16 January 2026
From 2005 to 2019, forty US states raised the dollar value threshold delineating misdemeanor and felony theft, reducing the expected punishment for a subset of property crimes. Using an event study framework, we observe ...Read more...
Stephen B. Billings, Michael D. Makowsky, Kevin Schnepel and Adam Soliman
24 October 2025