Criminal groups govern millions worldwide. Even in strong states, gangs resolve disputes
and provide security. Why do these duopolies of coercion emerge? Often, gangs fill …

We develop a model explaining how criminal organizations strategically use pre-electoral
violence as a way of influencing electoral results and politicians' behaviour. We then …

We document that the spread of the Mafia in Sicily at the end of the 19th century was in part
caused by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak …

This article evaluates the effects of violence related to the operations of drug-trafficking
organizations (DTOs) on electoral competition, defined by the number of electoral …

We analyze the effects of Mafia infiltration in the legal economy. Combining information from
investigative records with panel data on firms' governance and balance sheets, we build an …

Organized crime uses political violence to influence politics in a wide set of countries. This
paper exploits a novel dataset of attacks directed towards Italian local politicians to study …

This article assesses how legal institutions affect the influence of politically active criminal
organisations on the human capital of elected politicians using data from over 1,500 …

What is the impact of collusion between members of criminal organizations and politicians
on local public finances, in contexts in which organized crime is well-rooted? This article …

This study focuses on Italian corruption among mayors, since they are key players in the
Italian institutions. Political decentralization has brought local government closer to the …

We study the investment of organized crime in the legal economy. By using the shock
induced on the Italian credit market by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, we document …