The paper investigates the effect of local economic conditions on crime. The study focuses on Italy’s local labor markets and analyzes the short-term response of crime to the severe slump of 2007-2009. It shows that the downturn led to a significant increase in economic-related offenses that...

The 2004 Presidential Election in Mozambique was marred by allegations of fraud. We assess the validity of these allegations by testing whether or not qualitative descriptions of the methods and locations of misconduct are consistent with a series of simple quantitative tests. Most studies of...

This paper studies the design of law-making and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure, defined as the socialwelfare loss that results from the regime's inability to...

We investigate the causal relationship between judicial efficiency and firm size across Italian municipalities, exploiting spatial discontinuities in tribunals' jurisdiction for identification. Results show that halving the length of civil proceedings, average firm size would increase by around...

This paper examines the relationship between immigration and crime in a setting where large migration flows offer an opportunity to carefully appraise whether the populist view that immigrants cause crime is borne out by rigorous evidence. We consider possible crime effects from two large waves...

In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to the existing economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a policy intervention - the Street Crime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional resources to some...

This paper investigates how corrupt public officials and private agents adjust to policy reforms that change opportunities for bribery deals to take place. I exploit an exogenously determined tariff liberalization program that altered opportunities to extract bribes through a particular method...

We examine how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational change, labor demand, and improved productivity in the public sector using a new panel data set of police departments covering 1987-2003. While IT adoption is associated with increased administrative and organizational...

In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs as compared to outer London - in...

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career...