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Catalytic converter theft: An examination of the elasticity of crime

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Crime Prevention and Community Safety Aims and scope

Abstract

Catalytic converters are part of a vehicle’s exhaust system and contain valuable metals (i.e., platinum, palladium, and rhodium). The value of these metals has risen dramatically, and so they have the incidents of theft. This study contributes in two important ways: First, it provides insight into an emerging crime trend of catalsytic converter theft, and second, it advances knowledge of the elasticity of crime, specifically how the value of metal impacts thefts. Data on catalytic converter thefts were collected from official police reports and social media complaints in eight California cities for 42 months. We use regression analysis to study the weekly estimated value of catalytic converters and theft. Our regression approach, which we estimate using feasible generalized least squares, accounts for the non-stationarity in weekly metal thefts and allows for autocorrelation in a panel setting. Findings reveal an average price elasticity of 1.98, meaning that a 10% increase in metal prices results in approximately a 20% increase in catalytic converter thefts. The results illustrate how the value of metals impacts thefts.

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Notes

  1. Data used for the current study are part of a larger report on Catalytic Converter theft prepared by Morris (2021). That report includes a broad array of details that provide important insight to the crime and are not included in the present study. The Morris (2021) report can be accessed here:

  2. Natural logs are used to better capture nonlinearities in the data. The results are qualitatively similar when levels are used instead of natural logs.

  3. The p-value on our test statistic is less than 0.0001 indicating that we strongly reject the null hypothesis that residuals from least squares regression of Eq. 1 are not autocorrelated.

  4. One may be concerned about the possibility of spatially correlated errors if, for example, positive 'shocks' in one city led to 'shocks' in another of the cities. To check for this possibility, we used the residuals from our estimated model to conduct Pesaran’s test of cross-sectional dependence. The test statistic was 1.227 which implies a p-value greater than 0.10. Based on this, we fail to reject the Pesaran test’s null hypothesis that there is no cross-sectional dependence present.

  5. Given the functional form of Eq. 1, the elasticity of thefts (\(\eta\)) is given by the following relationship: \(\eta ={\beta }_{1}/{y}_{it}\).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice Administration, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA

    Ben Stickle & Samuel Fritts

  2. Department of Economics and Finance, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA

    Adam Rennhoff

  3. Department of Criminal Justice Administration, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, USA

    Ben Stickle

  4. Independent Researcher, Hercules, CA, USA

    Charles A. Morris

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  1. Ben Stickle
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Stickle, B., Rennhoff, A., Morris, C.A. et al. Catalytic converter theft: An examination of the elasticity of crime. Crime Prev Community Saf (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-024-00207-6

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