NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.
José M. Tavares and Marlene Thomas(Nova School of Business and Economics) will present the paper “Does organized crime attract EU funding? Evidence from Sicily” (co-authored with João Pereira dos Santos).
Registration: till noon of March 23, link to video-conference will be sent up to 5 p.m. (Moscow time).
Abstract:
This study analyzes the impact of Mafia on the allocation of EU funding. We focus on EU subsidies directed to the 390 Sicilian municipalities from 2007 to 2019. We proxy current Mafia activity by confiscated real estate assets from organized crime and instrument it with geographical shifters of land value and Mafia measures from the end of the 19th century. We show that the presence of Mafia increments the amount of EU funds and the number of EU projects assigned to municipalities. We repeat the analysis across different types of investments. A series of robustness checks confirms the reliability of our baseline results.