Congratulations to Wednesday Croft, 2023 BSc Economics (with placement) graduate, whose dissertation was made into a co-authored paper and accepted at the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. Her dissertation supervisor, Professor Nils Braakman, Professor of Economics, was also a co-author of the paper.

This paper looks at how private companies can help prevent crime. It focuses on Tesco, a major UK supermarket, which increased its security by adding guards and tagging items. Using crime data and store locations in Greater London, the study compares areas near Tesco stores to similar areas without them. The results show that Tesco’s new security measures reduced shoplifting. The study also checks whether crime moved to other nearby shops as a result

Professor Braakmann said: "Supervising undergraduate dissertations has always been one of my favourite aspects of being an academic. It is always a joy to see how people grapple with their topics, come up with great ideas and grow and develop through the process. Seeing outcomes such as this – which would be a great outcome for a chapter of a PhD thesis – is the cherry on top. It was also great fun to work with Wednesday, both during her dissertation and through the publication process."

Wednesday reflected on the experience: "Seeing my name on a published journal article is quite surreal! I really enjoyed writing my dissertation and was thrilled when Nils suggested we turn ideas from it into further research. The media spotlight on shoplifting only seems to be growing, and it will be interesting to see what people think about our paper, and what comes next.

"As incidents of shoplifting continue to rise, I’ve no doubt supermarkets will introduce stricter security measures, but how effective they will be in future remains to be seen. It was such a pleasure working with Nils, both while studying at NUBS and afterwards - the publishing of our joint paper is testament to his great teaching and generosity."

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