Mafia, elections and violence against politicians, with G. Dipoppa, Journal of Public Economics 2017

Organized crime uses political violence to influence politics in a wide set of countries. This paper exploits a novel dataset of attacks directed towards Italian local politicians to study how (and why) criminal organizations use violence against them.

We test two complementary theories to predict the use of violence i) before elections, to affect the electoral outcome; and ii) after elections, to influence politicians from the beginning of their term.

We provide causal evidence in favor of the latter hypothesis. The probability of being a target of violence increases in the weeks right after an election in areas with a high presence of organized crime, especially when elections result in a change of local government.

Published Version - Free Version
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Presentations:

• 1st Harvard workshop on Political Violence (Cambridge, US, 2018); Northeastern Political Science Association, Boston 2016 (US); Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans 2016 (US); European Political Science Association, Milan 2017 (IT); Toronto Political Behavior Workshop, Toronto 2017 (CAN); Bank of Italy UIF - Bocconi Workshop “Quantitative methods and the fight against economic crime 2017” (Rome, IT, 2017)
• Presentation at the Italian Senate of the paper “Mafia, Elections and Political Violence”, related to the activities of the Parliamentary Commission, “Commissione sulle intimidazioni agli amministratori locali”
• 2017:  Workshop on Political Economy, IEB (Barcelona, ES / Organizer); American Economic Association annual meeting (Chicago, US); 1st Catalan Economic Society Conference (Barcelona, ES)
• 2016: 10th Workshop on Political Economy, CES-IFO (Dresden, DE)​; University of Cagliari (IT); University of Ferrara (IT); Institut d'Economia de Barcelona IEB (ES)

Media:

• National Post (Canada), The Conversation (US), Chicago Tribune(US),  The Local (US), Matamata Politik (Indonesia) ​