Macroeconomic determinants of financial fraud and identity theft

This study concentrates on the environment of financial institutions and investigates how macroeconomic fluctuations and sociodemographic factors affect the incidence of financial fraud and identity theft in the pre-covid era. Using quarterly records of the incidence of these variables provided by a major financial institution in Mexico from 1999 to 2019, we modelize financial crimes of fraud and identity theft. Macroeconomic and sociodemographic variables are employed. Oil prices are a new variable added to the analysis of financial crimes that have an impact on oil-exporting economies such as Mexico. The cointegration and vector error correction analysis is applied. Our findings show that the unemployment rate, oil prices, GDP per capita and gender have a significant impact in the short and long term on fraud and identity theft incidence. The Toda-Yamamoto test shows evidence of Granger-causality from inflation and the stock market towards these financial crimes.