I examine the effects that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which legalized almost 3 million immigrants, had on crime in the United States. I exploit the IRCA's quasi-random timing as well as geographic variation in the intensity of treatment to isolate causal impacts. I find...

Given the background of changing institutional competencies in the European Union, we analyze the choice of asylum law standards of national and European parliaments, the Council of the European Union and codecision between the Council and the European Parliament. In a two country model we nd...

Human trafficking is a humanitarian problem of global scale, but quantitative research on the issue barely exists. This paper is a first attempt to explore the economic drivers of human trafficking and migrant exploitation using micro data. We argue that migration pressure combined with informal...

The incidence of illicit behaviors among foreign-born residents in the U.S. reveals significant variations across countries of origin. This paper identifies the factors underlying such cross-country variations in immigrant apprehensions by using cross-sectional data from 104 countries averaged...

We exploit exogenous variation in legal status following the January 2007 European Union enlargement to estimate its effect on immigrant crime. We difference out unobserved time-varying factors by 1) comparing recidivism rates of immigrants from the "new" and "candidate" member countries and 2)...

Worldwide human trafficking (HT) is the third most often registered international criminal activity, ranked only after drug and weapon trafficking. The aim of the paper is to measure the extent of HT inflows to destination countries. It proposes the application of the Multiple Indicators...

This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human...

At a time of increased attention on the international agenda for human trafficking, this paper examines the determinants of human trafficking inflows to 13 European countries based on official records. By employing a fixed effects zero-inflated, negative binomial gravity-type model, we address...

We study a high profile public policy question on immigration, namely the link between crime and immigration, presenting new evidence from England and Wales in the 2000s. For studying immigration impacts, this period is of considerable interest as the composition of migration to the UK altered...

Worldwide human trafficking (HT) is the third most often registered international criminal activity, ranked only after drug and weapon trafficking. The aim of the paper is to measure the extent of HT inflows to destination countries. It proposes the application of the Multiple Indicators...