The economic consequences of crime in Italy

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to employ provincial data to study the relationship between several crime typologies, namely murder, robbery, extortion and fraud and economic output in Italy.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose a spatial econometric approach where the spatial proximity is defined by a measure of physical distance between locations, in order to take into account possible spill-over effects.

Findings

The results of the spatial estimation suggest that criminal activities, namely murder and robbery, exhibit a negative impact on Italian gross domestic product while fraud and total crime do not affect economic output and that there are beneficial spill-overs from neighbouring provinces.

Originality/value

The study empirically shows that only violent crimes have a crowding-out effect on economic output.

Citation

Carboni, O.A. and Detotto, C. (2016), "The economic consequences of crime in Italy", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 122-140. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-07-2014-0121