We use rich microdata on bank robberies to estimate individual-level disutilities of imprisonment. The identification rests on the money versus apprehension trade-off that robbers face inside the bank when deciding whether to leave or collect money for an additional minute. The distribution of...

We analyze the consequences of illegally residing in a country on the likelihood of reporting a crime to the police and, as a consequence, on the likelihood to become victims of a crime. We use an immigration amnesty to address two issues when dealing with the legal status of immigrants: it is...

This paper exploits dictated delays in local police hiring by a centralized national authority to break the simultaneity between police and crime. In Italy police officers can only be hired through lengthy national public contests which the Parliament, the President, and the Court of Auditors...

Is there a rational component in the decision to commit suicide? Economists have been trying to shed light on this question by studying whether suicide rates are related to contemporaneous conditions. This paper goes one step further: we test whether suicides are linked to forward-looking...

Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia members active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters' economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic status...

Despite its policy relevance there is little evidence on the joint evolution of gender differences in wages and workplace safety. Between 1994 and 2002 Italian micro-level data show a decline in both gaps, as well as an increased concentration of injuries among low-skilled female workers. The...

An influential literature has used the aftermath of terrorist attacks to estimate large effects of police street deployment on crime. However, the elasticities obtained in these settings may not easily extrapolate to more standard circumstances. This paper exploits a natural experiment that...

Flexible work arrangements are on the rise in many countries, ranging from Germany's mini-jobs to UK's zero-hours contracts. These contracts allow for quick labor demand adjustments and are also seen as a way to discourage undeclared work, and more than 10 years ago Italy introduced what was...

We estimate the "incapacitation effect" on crime using variation in Italian prison population driven by eight collective pardons passed between 1962 and 1995. The prison releases are sudden – within one day –, very large – up to 35 percent of the entire prison population – and happen...

More policing reduces crime but little is known about the mechanism. Does policing deter crime by reducing its attractiveness, or because it leads to additional arrests of recurrent criminals? This paper provides evidence of a direct link between policing and arrests. During shift changes a...