Mega Events in Sports and Crime: Evidence From the 1990 Football World Cup

Despite an increasing desire to host major sport events there is almost no research that tries to identify and measure the possible negative spillovers they generate. In particular, there is limited understanding about crime responses. This article investigates the causal relation between hosting the 1990 Football World Cup and crime rates at the province level. Using a fixed effect estimator to control for province-level differences in crime, we find that hosting the Football World Cup leads to a significant increase in most property crimes (bag-snatching, pick-pocketing, shoplifting, and burglary) but only in one violent crime (intentional personal injuries). © The Author(s) 2011

Liner Companies’ Container Shipping Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis

The liner shipping industry moves products around the world. There are thousands of container ships circling the globe at all times, making the global economy possible. Liner shipping companies ship anything that can fit into a cargo container. The standard containers measure 20 feet in length by 8 feet in width or 40 feet in length by 8 feet in width. According to Alphaliner (2015), there are at least 100 linear shipping companies in the world. This study will evaluate the efficiency of different-sized liner shipping companies using Data Envelopment Analysis: it will consider operational aspects and will only include revenue as a financial output. The study predicts that companies with the best fleet utilization will have the highest efficiency scores even when their overall revenue may be less than other companies

The role of museums in bilateral tourist flows: Evidence from Italy

This paper estimates the causal relationship between the supply of art and tourist flows. We use aggregate bilateral data on tourist flows and on museums in the twenty Italian regions. To solve the potential endogeneity of the supply of museums we use three different empirical strategies: we control for bilateral macro-area dummies, we compute the degree of selection on unobservables relative to observables which would be necessary to drive the result to zero and, finally, we adopt a 2SLS approach that uses a measure of historical patronage, the number of noble families, as an instrument for the number of museums. We find strong evidence of a causal relationship between museums and tourist flows. Local supply of art helps not only attracting cultural consumers from other regions, but retaining residents who would otherwise visit other regions to consume arts. We conclude the paper with a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the economic impact (driven by tourism) of museums

Returns to Education and Experience in Criminal Organizations: Evidence from the Italian-American Mafia

Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This is the first paper that investigates whether education has not only a positive impact on legitimate, but also on illegitimate activities. We use as a case study one of the longest running criminal corporations in history: the Italian-American mafia. Its most successful members have been capable businessmen, orchestrating crimes that require abilities that might be learned at school: extracting the optimal rent when setting up a racket, weighting interests against default risk when starting a loan sharking business or organising supply chains, logistics and distribution when setting up a drug dealing system. We address this question by comparing mobsters with their closest (non-mobster) neighbors using United States Census data in 1940. We document that mobsters have one year less education than their neighbors on average. None of the specifications presented identified any significant difference in the returns to education between these two groups. Private returns to education exist also in the illegal activities characterised by a certain degree of complexity as in the case of organized crime in mid-twentieth century United States

Rationalizable Suicides: Evidence from Changes in Inmates' Expected Length of Sentence

Is there a rational component in the decision to commit suicide? Economists have been trying to shed light on this question by studying whether suicide rates are related to contemporaneous conditions. This paper goes one step further: we test whether suicides are linked to forward-looking behavior. In Italy, collective sentence reductions (pardons) often lead to massive releases of prisoners. More importantly, they are usually preceded by prolonged parliamentary activity (legislative proposals, discussion, voting, etc.) that inmates seem to follow closely. We use the legislative proposals for collective pardons to measure changes in the inmates' expectations about the length of their sentences, and find that suicide rates tend to be significantly lower when par- dons are proposed in congress. This suggests that, amongst inmates in Italian prisons, the average decision to commit suicide responds to changes in current expectations about future conditions. At least partially, therefore, the decision seems rationalizable

Returns to education in criminal organizations: Did going to college help Michael Corleone?

Is there any return to education in criminal activities? This paper is one of the first to investigate whether education has not only a positive impact on legitimate, but also on illegitimate activities. We use as a case study one of the longest running criminal corporations in history: the Italian-American mafia. Its most successful members were capable businessmen, orchestrating crimes that required abilities that might be learned at school: extracting the optimal rent when setting up a racket, weighting interests against default risk when starting a loan sharking business or organizing supply chains, logistics and distribution when setting up a drug dealing system. We address this question by comparing mobsters to a variety of samples drawn from the United States 1940 Population Census, including a sample of their closest (non-mobster) neighbors. We document that mobsters have one year less education than their neighbors on average. We find that mobsters have significant returns to education of 7.5–8.5% , which is only slightly smaller than their neighbors and 2–5 percentage points smaller than for U.S.-born men or male citizens. Mobster returns were consistently about twice as large as a sample of Italian immigrants or immigrants from all origin countries. Within that, those charged with complex crimes including embezzlement and bookmaking have the highest returns. We conclude that private returns to education exist even in the illegal activities characterized by a certain degree of complexity as in the case of organized crime in mid-twentieth century United States

El rol del G20 en la Crisis Financiera Internacional

La Crisis Financiera Internacional del 2008-09 tuvo su epicentro en los Estados Unidos y Europa, pero rápidamente se expandió por todo el mundo, contagiando a los países emergentes y en desarrollo. La globalidad de este suceso generó la necesidad de un órgano internacional que tuviera la legitimidad para dar una respuesta. La coyuntura global demostraba que el G7 no podía cumplir ese rol, generando el ascenso del G20 que se posiciona como el principal foro de coordinación a nivel mundial. Este trabajo se propone analizar el rol del G20 como organismo de coordinación, con el foco puesto sobre aquellas medidas que sirvieron en el corto plazo para revertir los efectos de la crisis. Como resultado, el trabajo encuentra que, si bien la coordinación macroeconómica fue imperfecta, tuvo éxito para que la crisis más importante de la historia reciente no fuera aún más profunda. A su vez, las reformas y cambios institucionales fueron exitosos en tanto que consolidaron al G20 como principal mesa para la toma de decisiones, logrando un mayor peso de los países emergentes y en desarrollo en los organismos internacionales y reafirmando la nueva configuración de poder e influencia global.Por motivos relacionados con los derechos de autor este documento solo puede ser consultado en la Biblioteca Di Tella. Para reservar una cita podés ponerte en contacto con [email protected]. Si sos el autor de esta tesis y querés autorizar su publicación en este repositorio, podés ponerte en contacto con [email protected]