Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of a policy that targets criminal infiltration in local governments on the provision of local public goods in Italian municipalities. Building on the theoretical framework proposed by Dal Bò (American Political Science Review 100:41–53, 2006), we use a sufficient statistic approach to describe the dynamic behaviour of local public goods when stricter law enforcement weakens criminal pressure groups. Utilizing data on the local public finances of Italian municipalities spanning from 2004 to 2015, our findings reveal that, after the dismissal of infiltrated governments, the targeted municipalities devote a larger share of resources to public goods, with an estimated increase of approximately 3.9 percentage points. Notably, this effect seems to be driven by an increase in investment of approximately 3 percentage points. Overall, our results suggest that policies targeting the problem of criminal infiltration in local governments can improve socioeconomic conditions and the well-being of local communities, by increasing investments in economically and socially relevant public goods.

中文翻译：

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意大利的反黑手党政策和公共产品

摘要

本文旨在评估针对地方政府犯罪渗透的政策对意大利各城市当地公共产品供应的影响。基于Dal Bò提出的理论框架（《美国政治科学评论》100:41-53, 2006），我们使用充分的统计方法来描述当更严格的执法削弱犯罪压力团体时地方公共物品的动态行为。利用 2004 年至 2015 年意大利各城市的地方公共财政数据，我们的研究结果表明，在解散渗透政府后，目标城市将更大比例的资源投入到公共产品上，估计增加了约 3.9 个百分点。值得注意的是，这种效应似乎是由投资增加约 3 个百分点推动的。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，针对地方政府犯罪渗透问题的政策可以通过增加对经济和社会相关公共产品的投资来改善社会经济条件和当地社区的福祉。