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A Burning Question: Does Arson Increase When Local House Prices Decline?, Michael D. Eriksen, James M. Carson
A Burning Question: Does Arson Increase When Local House Prices Decline?, Michael D. Eriksen, James M. Carson
Michael D Eriksen
We construct panel data on house prices and the determined cause of 4.8 million individual fires in the United States between 1986 and 2010 to test whether decreases in local housing market prices coincided with increases in arson. Since some insured homeowners may attempt to disguise the actual cause of fire as accidental, we also examine how decreases in local house prices are associated with changes in the total number of fires and the probability of determined causes of accidental fires. For the sample period, our results suggest that declines in local house prices coincided with increases in arson, the …