Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/273167 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 010.2023
Publisher: 
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milano
Abstract: 
Organised crime tightens its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On the other hand, this kind of anti-crime measure might also induce criminal clans to go inactive, owing to the lower expected payoff from the "business" of influencing politics, which would reduce violence. To determine which of these possible effects is prevalent, we undertake an empirical assessment of the impact of city council dissolution for mafia influence in Italy as prescribed by Decree Law 164/1991 in discouraging violence against politicians in the period 2010-2019. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that in the dissolved municipalities the enforcement of the Law reduces violence and that the effect persists (at least) for two electoral rounds. The most likely driving channel of this result is the renewed pool of politicians elected after compulsory administration. These findings are robust to a series of endogeneity tests.
Subjects: 
Organized Crime
Violence
Anti-corruption measures
Spillovers
JEL: 
C25
D73
D78
I38
K42
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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