This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on crime in India. We exploit the quasi-random variation in the outcome of close elections between candidates with and without criminal accusations to instrument the share of...

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...

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...

We study voters’ response to public policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon that created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where resident pardoned individuals had...

We present evidence that Washington State judges respond to political pressure by sentencing serious crimes more severely. Sentences are around 10% longer at the end of a judge's political cycle than at the beginning; judges' discretionary departures above the sentencing guidelines range...

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...

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...

We study voters' response to public policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon that created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where resident pardoned individuals had a...

This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on crime in India. We exploit the quasi-random variation in the outcome of close elections between candidates with and without criminal accusations to instrument the share of...

OECD indicators of structural policy show that policy changes in Italy since 1998 should have improved the environment for entrepreneurship significantly, but in the same period its economic performance has deteriorated noticeably. This may be partly because there is a difference between policy...