Do Data Breach Laws Reduce Identity Theft?

A new working paper entitled "Do Data Breach Laws Reduce Identity Theft?" (Carnegie Mellon University) analyzes the effect of data breach laws on the presence of identity theft. Although the authors acknowlege limitations to their study, they conclude that they found no statistically significant effect that data breach laws reduce identity theft. This is one more indication that an effective approach to tackling the problem of identity theft requires more than enacting legislation alone.