Research

We study the long-term impact of compulsory military service, a powerful nation building tool, on attitudes toward immigrants. Using a regression discontinuity design, we compare cohorts of men required to serve with those exempted due to suspension of compulsory service in 21 European countries. We find that conscripts exhibit more negative attitudes towards immigrants, whereas this is not true for women in the same birth cohorts. The impact is more pronounced in countries with high levels of immigration, where immigrants are more distant from the native population in terms of language, culture, and religion, and when the military service was done during a left-wing government, and hence provided a stronger change in narrative during a crucial formative period.
[Working paper]

This paper investigates the short- and long-term impacts of lockdown and second-wave restrictions on crime and domestic violence (DV) calls in Italy, using a novel panel dataset of Italian municipalities, containing criminal incidents from 2019 to 2021 for the 85\% of Italian population, and DV calls from the national DV hotline. I find a significant short-term decrease in various crime categories following the lockdown implementation, while DV calls experienced a 75\% increase. As restrictions lifted, crime rates gradually returned to pre-pandemic levels, but DV calls took longer to normalize, suggesting long-lasting effects. Second-wave restrictions, however, did not affect crime levels. These results suggest that crime might have adapted to the restrictions.

[Draft available soon]