“Till death do us part”: Divorce and femicide in Italy, with Davide Cipullo and Elisa Muscarella

Abstract: This paper estimates the causal effect of easing access to divorce on intimate partner violence (IPV). We study two divorce law reforms approved in Italy that substantially reduced both the monetary costs and mandatory waiting periods required to obtain a divorce, generating a sharp and heterogeneous increase in divorce rates nationwide. Economic theory yields ambiguous predictions: by strengthening outside options, easier divorce may deter violence through intra-household bargaining, yet it may also increase violence if separation triggers coercive control or retaliatory behavior. To address concerns about endogenous reporting of IPV—particularly salient when legal options change—we focus on femicides, the most extreme form of IPV, which, crucially for our purposes, are less subject to underreporting and measurement error. We combine administrative data on the universe of marriages and divorces with administrative and hand-collected data on femicides, and we exploit plausibly exogenous variation across municipalities in the exposure to the reforms arising from aggregate differences in exposure to the reform across age groups interacted with cross-locality differences in the age composition of married couples. We find that greater access to divorce increases the incidence of femicide. The effect is primarily driven by killings perpetrated within the family environment.

Life After Divorce: Mental Health and Economic Vulnerability [cooming soon]


Female Groups and Women Empowerment in Nigeria [cooming soon]

Agosti, F., Toffolutti, V., Cavalli, N., Nivakoski, S., Mascherini, M., & Aassve, A. (2022). Information and vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from the early stage of the vaccine roll-out in 28 European countries. Plos one, 17(9), e0273555 [Link here]

Agosti, F., Dusatko, J., Meroni, E. C., & Vrobel, J. (2021). Evaluation of the Support to Schools Project in Czech Republic. Publications Office of the European Union: Luxembourg. [Link here]

Eurofound (2021), Impact of COVID-19 on young people in the EU, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. [Link here]

Emergenza idrica e agricoltura 4.0: soluzioni smart per gestire le risorse idriche, with Chiara Corbo and Filippo Renga [Link here]
ESG360, Sept. 2022