A shop gets robbed. The customer gets a bigger bill

A broken shop window has a way of quietly migrating onto the price tag. Economists Carl Hase and Johannes Kasinger matched robberies and burglaries with sales at cannabis retailers in Washington state from 2018–2021: in the months after a crime, prices rose by 1.7–1.8% at both victimised stores and nearby competitors. Writing in the November issue of American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, they link this to higher costs rather than a short-term surge in demand. Their estimates put most of the additional social cost on consumers, including those shopping behind perfectly intact windows.