Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/167518 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6532
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We provide evidence about voters’ response to crime control policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon releasing about one third of the prison population. The pardon created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where resident pardoned individuals have a higher incentive to recidivate experienced higher recidivism. Moreover, in these municipalities: i) newspapers were more likely to report crime news involving pardoned individuals; ii) voters held worse beliefs on the incumbent governments ability to control crime and iii) with respect to the previous elections, the incumbent national government experienced a worse electoral performance in the April 2008 national elections relative to the opposition coalition. Overall, our findings indicate that voters keep incumbent politicians accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of their policies.
Subjects: 
accountability
voting
natural experiment
crime
recidivism
JEL: 
D72
K42
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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