Migration Restrictions and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from a Natural Experiment *

Abstract We estimate the causal effect of immigrants' legal status on criminal behavior exploiting exogenous variation in migration restrictions across nationalities driven by the last round of the European Union (EU) enlargement. Unique individual-level data on a collective clemency bill enacted in Italy five months before the enlargement allow us to compare the post-release criminal record of inmates from new EU member countries with a control group of pardoned inmates from candidate EU member countries. Differences in differences in the probability of rearrest between the two groups before and after the enlargement show that obtaining legal status lowers the recidivism of economically motivated offenders, but only in areas that provide relatively better labor market opportunities to legal immigrants. We provide a search-theoretic model of criminal behavior that is consistent with these results

The Role of Information for Retirement Behavior: Evidence based on the Stepwise Introduction of the Social Security Statement

Abstract In 1995, the Social Security Administration started sending out the annual Social Security Statement. It contains information about the worker's estimated benefits at the ages 62, 65, and 70. I use this unique natural experiment to analyze the retirement and claiming decision making. First, I find that, despite the previous availability of information, the Statement has a significant impact on workers' knowledge about their benefits. These findings are consistent with a model where workers need to gather costly information in order to improve their retirement decision. Second, I use this exogenous variation in knowledge to analyze the optimality of workers' decisions. Several findings suggest that workers do not change their retirement behavior: i) Workers do not change their expected age of retirement after receiving the Statement; ii) monthly claiming patterns do not sho

Migration Restrictions and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from a Natural Experiment * preliminary and incomplete draft comments welcome

Abstract We estimate the causal effect of immigrants' legal status on criminal behavior exploiting exogenous variation in migration restrictions across nationalities driven by the last round of the European Union enlargement. Unique individual-level data on a collective clemency bill enacted in Italy five months before the enlargement allow us to compare the post-release criminal record of immigrants from newly admitted countries with a control group of pardoned inmates from other countries. Difference-indifferences in the hazard rate of rearrest between members of the two groups before and after the enlargement show that obtaining legal status lowers recidivism, particularly so for non-violent offenders and in areas that provide relatively better labor market opportunities to legal immigrants. We conclude that legal status reduces crime by raising its opportunity cost