We study the investment of organized crime in the legal economy. By using the shock induced on the Italian credit market by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, we document how provinces with a high organized crime presence have been impacted less by the crisis in terms of the establishment of new...

A central question in terms of political (self-)selection relates to the incentives leading high ability individuals to enter – or abstain from entering – into politics. In this article, we use data from Italian municipalities over the period 1985-2012 to empirically assess how changes in...

We investigate how connections to organized crime manifest on firms' financial statements and analyze the impact of these connections on firm performance outcomes. Using a unique dataset that identifies Italian firms connected to organized crime, we find that connected firms have lower...

This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight into the nature of social preferences amongst organized criminals and how these differ from "ordinary" criminals on the one hand and from the non‐criminal population in the same geographical area on...