Crime and Prices: Evidence from Thefts of Expensive Precious Metal

Gerald Foong (), Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi ()
Additional contact information
Gerald Foong: Singapore Management University
Matteo Sandi: London School of Economics

No 18353, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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 prices of precious metals embedded in converters with newly assembled U.S. data and multiple research designs. We show that phenomenally fast increases in precious metal prices generated a sizeable and rapid rise in auto-part thefts, while subsequent price declines and policy responses quickly reversed this pattern. The resulting boom-and-bust dynamics provide clean evidence that both demand- and supply-side economic forces shape property crime and inform targeted deterrence policies.

Keywords: auto-part theft; expensive precious metals; catalytic converters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18353.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Crime and Prices: Evidence From Thefts of Expensive Precious Metal (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18353

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().