Immigration and crime: an empirical analysis

Milo Bianchi, Paolo Buonanno and Paolo Pinotti

No 698, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: In this paper we examine the empirical relationship between immigration and crime across Italian provinces during the period 1990-2003. Drawing on police data, 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. We then use instrumental variables based on migration towards other European countries to identify the causal impact of exogenous changes in the immigrant population of Italy. According to these estimates, immigration increases only the incidence of robberies and has no effect on all other types of crime. Since robberies represent a very small fraction of all criminal offences, 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)
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-law, nep-mig and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_698_08

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