I examine the post‐war economic development of two regions in southern Italy exposed to
mafia activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their economic …

We develop a model explaining how criminal organizations strategically use pre-electoral
violence as a way of influencing electoral results and politicians' behaviour. We then …

A law issued to combat political corruption and Mafia infiltration of city councils in Italy has
resulted in episodes of large, unanticipated, temporary contractions in local public spending …

Economists and legal scholars have had an abiding interest in the question of why so many
laws languish unimplemented. But an even more intriguing and philosophically troubling …

A model of “harassment bribes,” paid for services one is entitled to, is developed to analyze
the proposal to legalize paying these bribes while increasing fines on accepting them. We …

The testimonies of insider witnesses are often key to prosecutions of international crimes,
despite significant trustworthiness concerns. However, we know little about the practice of …

Purpose This research analyses the resistance and resilience of drug trafficking
organizations against law enforcement interventions targeting specific operational roles …

In this paper, I assess the causal effects of judicial administration on a sample of Italian
criminal firms in the period 2004–2016 to shed light on the dynamic path of the firm's …

We study an enforcement model in which, as soon as a Legislator grants an amnesty to low-
rank criminals cooperating with the justice, top criminals react by bribing public officials in …

I examine the post-war economic growth of two regions in southern Italy exposed to mafia
activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their counterfactual …