This paper evaluates the effects on crime of supply-side interventions that restricted access to pseudoephedrine-based medications in the USA, drastically reducing the domestic production of methamphetamine. I find that these government interventions increased property and violent crime by around 3-4%, with criminogenic effects lasting for up to 7 months. Stronger evidence is detected in counties where laboratories producing methamphetamine were previously in operation. My findings suggest that policy interventions that have a limited effect on supply and no impact on the demand for drugs could open up the way to unwarranted crime responses. Timely policy implications are discussed.

We evaluate the unintended effects of Universal Credit (UC), a monumental welfare reform that has increased the stringency of the UK social security payment system. We exploit the rollout of UC across constituencies, targeting first-time claimants, predominantly young males. Using monthly data from 2010 to 2019 for England and Wales, we first document the negative economic impacts of UC, showing it has led to an increase of around 6000 repossession orders from the social housing sector. We then focus on UC’s criminogenic effects, finding the reform has caused around 35,000 burglaries and 25,000 vehicle crimes. Collectively, our findings highlight the danger of welfare policies affecting the economic incentives of individuals at the bottom of the income distribution. They also have timely policy relevance considering 6.5 million benefit recipients will soon transition onto UC. (JEL K14, K42).

Special interest influence via lobbying is increasingly controversial and legislative efforts to deal with this issue have centered on the principle of transparency. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework provided by the US Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). Specifically, we study the role of ex-Congressional officials who join US lobbying firms in positions that could be related to lobbying activity but without officially registering as lobbyists themselves. We find that firm lobbying revenues increase significantly when these potential ‘shadow lobbyists’ join, with effects in the range of 10-20%. This shadow lobbyist revenue effect is comparable to the effect of a registered lobbyist at the median of the industry skill distribution. As such, it is challenging to reconcile the measured shadow lobbyist effect with the 20% working time threshold for registering as a lobbyist. Based on our estimates, the contribution of unregistered ex-Congressional officials could explain 4.9% of the increase in sectoral revenues, compared to 24.0% for the group of registered officials.

The effects of stolen goods markets on crime: pawnshops, property theft, and the gold rush of the 2000sArticle (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk d'Este, Rocco (2020) The effects of stolen goods markets on crime: pawnshops, property theft, and the gold rush of the 2000s. The Journal of Law & Economics, 63 (3). pp. 449-472.

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