Research

Published Papers

Anti-mafia policies and public goods in Italy
(joint with G. d'Agostino, Public Choice, 2024)

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of a policy that targets criminal infiltration in local governments on the provision of local public goods in Italian municipalities. Building on the theoretical framework proposed by Dal Bò (American Political Science Review 100:41–53, 2006), we use a sufficient statistic approach to describe the dynamic behaviour of local public goods when stricter law enforcement weakens criminal pressure groups. Utilizing data on the local public finances of Italian municipalities spanning from 2004 to 2015, our findings reveal that, after the dismissal of infiltrated governments, the targeted municipalities devote a larger share of resources to public goods, with an estimated increase of approximately 3.9 percentage points. Notably, this effect seems to be driven by an increase in investment of approximately 3 percentage points. Overall, our results suggest that policies targeting the problem of criminal infiltration in local governments can improve socioeconomic conditions and the well-being of local communities, by increasing investments in economically and socially relevant public goods. 
One of the characteristics of modern mafia-type organizations is their ability to infiltrate or influence the legal economy. In this paper, we provide evidence of the strong relationship between mafia and market concentration in Sicily. We use data on Sicilian municipalities and show that the presence of mafia-type organizations is associated with a high degree of market concentration in the construction industry. We also analyze the impact of two anti-mafia policies, the dismissal of city councils for mafia infiltration, and the seizure and reassignment of firms owned by the mafia, and evaluate their effects on the degree of competition in local entrepreneurship. We show that the seizure policy, which directly affects the financial interests of criminal organizations, can reduce their dominant economic positions and lead to higher market competition.

Working Papers

Cash transfers and health outcomes: evidence from Italian municipalities
(joint with C. Guccio, G. Pignataro, D. Romeo, HEDG Working Papers, University of York, 2024)

This paper aims to assess the impact of a cash transfer programme implemented in Italy since 2014, known as the '80 euro bonus', on health outcomes as gauged by mortality rates. Using municipality-level data over the period 2010-2019 and a difference-in-differences approach, we find a significant reduction in mortality rates associated with the size of cash transfers and the number of recipients in the municipality. This effect remains robust across several checks. Furthermore, at the provincial level, we observe sustained decreases in mortality rates, especially for cancer and cardiovascular diseases, in the areas with a higher concentration of cash transfer recipients. These results support the positive impact of increased financial resources on health outcomes and highlight the role of cash transfers as effective tools for public health policies. 

Selected Work in Progress

Hiding behind the threshold: anti-mafia screening policy and public procurement in Italian municipalities
(joint with G. d'Agostino)

In this paper, we exploit a discontinuity in anti-mafia screening procedures to show that local public buyers may facilitate the misappropriation of resources by organized crime, by manipulating the value of contracts (public works and services). We use data on public procurement contracts issued by Italian municipalities, covering the period between 2007 and 2021. Using bunching estimators we uncover manipulation of the value of contracts just below the anti-mafia screening threshold of €150,000, with bunching behavior being sharper in public works and in provinces with higher mafia intensity. We also show that public procurement contracts awarded just below the threshold display worse performance indicators in terms of cost overruns and renegotiations, and tend to be awarded to firms that display financial metrics coherent with the hypotheses of mafia infiltration.

Criminal infiltrations in the legal economy and public procurement efficiency in Italy
(joint with L. Ferrante)

The aim of this paper is to assess how mafia infiltration in the legal economy influences the performance of public work contracts in Italy. We use a dataset on about 70,000 public work contracts awarded in Italy from 2007 to 2021, and we assess two relevant dimensions of inefficiency in the execution of public works: cost overruns and time delays. We show that mafia infiltration in the public works sector, proxied by the presence of construction firms that will later be confiscated, determines higher cost overruns of about 4 percentage points. Moreover, we show that cost overruns are even higher (18 percentage points) when also local governments are infiltrated, suggesting that mafia firms operating in the local area leverage on political connections to secure contracts and renegotiate prices during the execution. We do not find significant effects with respect to delays in the execution of works.