Organised Crime, Captured Politicians and the Allocation of Public Resources

Nicola Mastrorocco and Marco Di Cataldo

Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: This paper studies the consequences of collusion between members of criminal organisations and politicians in Italian local governments. In order to capture the presence of organised crime, we exploit the staggered enforcement of a national law allowing for dissolution of a municipal government upon evidence of collusion between elected officials and the mafia. We measure the consequences of this collusion by using newly collected data on public spending, local taxes and elected politicians at the local level. Differences-in-differences estimates reveal that infiltrated local governments not only spend more on average on construction and waste management and less on police enforcement, but also collect fewer fiscal revenues. In addition, we uncover key elements of local elections associated with mafia-government collusion. In particular, Regression Discontinuity estimates show that infiltration is more likely to occur when right-wing parties win local elections.

Keywords: Organized crime; Elections; Collusions; Public Spending; Italy. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H72 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2018-09, Revised 2021-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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https://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2020/TEP0420.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Organized Crime, Captured Politicians, and the Allocation of Public Resources (2022)
Working Paper: Organised crime, captured politicians, and the allocation of public resources (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0420

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