CEDE Seminar - Eduard Martínez

This paper studies the effect of the intensive margin of a negative economic shock on crime. I collect the criminal records of 165,000 users of DMG, an informal financial sector firm that closed in Colombia at the end of 2008. I exploit the exogenous variation in users with capitalizable deposits within the days around the firm's statal intervention. The results suggest increased criminal reports for those suffering from the negative economic impact. Additionally, I found that criminal reports of the other household members increased by 3.5%. Finally, I use the lost investment amount to estimate the elasticity of crime.