Results found a significant effect of collective perceptions of economic conditions on acquisitive crime and a significant effect of acquisitive crime on homicide. Acquisitive crime mediates the relationship between collective economic perceptions and homicide. Results suggest that analyses of homicide that omit acquisitive crimes as predictors may be biased and subject to misleading conclusions about the impact of acquisitive crimes and the economy on homicide trends. The same may be true of analyses of incarceration effects on homicide that fail to investigate the indirect influence of acquisitive crime. The effect of imprisonment on homicide, like that of the economy, is largely indirect and mediated by acquisitive crime. To avoid potentially serious specification error, future research on homicide should incorporate acquisitive crimes and investigate the indirect effects of changing economic conditions and incarceration rates on the production and control of lethal violence. Data were collected from four U.S. census regions (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and analyzed in fixed-effects panel models of regional crime rates over the period 1970-2006. Figures, tables, and references