The Value of Connections: Evidence from the Italian-American Mafia

Giovanni Mastrobuoni ()

No 335, Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto

Abstract: Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia mem- bers active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters’ economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic status exploiting detailed information about their place of residence. Housing values are reconstructed using current deflated transactions recorded on Zillow.com. I deal with the potential reverse causality between the economic status and the gangster’s position in the network exploiting exogenous exposure to potential pre-immigration connections. In the absence of pre-immigration data I use the informational content of surnames, called isonomy, to measure the place of origin. The instrument is valid as long as conditional on the characteristics of the gang- sters (including the region of birth and a rich set of controls about the gangsters’ legal and illegal activities) such exposure influences the gangsters’ importance in- side the network (called centrality) but not the preference for specific housing needs. A standard deviation increase in closeness centrality increases economic status by between one forth (OLS) and one standard deviation (2SLS).

Keywords: Mafia; Networks; Centrality; Housing Prices; Value of Connections; Crime; Surnames; Isonomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 C21 D23 D85 K42 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.335.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Value of Connections: Evidence from the Italian-American Mafia (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cca:wpaper:335

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giovanni Bert ().