Clicking on Heaven's Door: The Effect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime

Paolo Pinotti

No 11597, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We estimate the effect of immigrant legalization on the crime rate of immigrants in Italy by exploiting an ideal regression discontinuity design: fixed quotas of residence permits are available each year, applications must be submitted electronically on specific ``Click Days'', and are processed on a first-come, first-served basis until the available quotas are exhausted. Matching data on applications with individual-level criminal records, we show that legalization reduces the crime rate of legalized immigrants by 0.6 percentage points on average, on a baseline crime rate of 1.1 percent.

Keywords: Legal status; Crime; Regression discontinuity design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J61 K37 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mig and nep-ure
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Related works:
Journal Article: Clicking on Heaven's Door: The Effect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime (2017)
Working Paper: Clicking on Heaven's Door: The E ffect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime (2016)
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