Do Immigrants Cause Crime?

Milo Bianchi (), Paolo Buonanno and Paolo Pinotti ()

No 1023, CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) from CEPREMAP

Abstract: We examine the empirical relationship between immigration and crime across Italian provinces during the period 1990-2003. Drawing on police administrative records, we first document that the size of the immigrant population is positively correlated with the incidence of property crimes and with the overall crime rate. Then, we use instrumental variables based on immigration toward destination countries other than Italy to identify the causal impact of exogenous changes in Italy's immigrant population. According to these estimates, immigration increases only the incidence of robberies, while leaving un- affected all other types of crime. Since robberies represent a very minor fraction of all criminal offenses, the effect on the overall crime rate is not significantly different from zero.

Keywords: Immigration; Crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 K42 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-law, nep-soc and nep-ure
Date: 2010-11
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Related works:
Working Paper: Do Immigrants Cause Crime? (2012)
Working Paper: Do Immigrants Cause Crime? (2012)
Working Paper: Do Immigrants Cause Crime? (2008)
Working Paper: Do immigrants cause crime? (2008)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpm:docweb:1023

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