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

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

Hybrid materials for molecular sieves

Hybrid microporous organosilica membranes for molecular separations made by acid-catalyzed solgel synthesis from bridged silsesquioxane precursors have demonstrated good performance in terms of flux and selectivity and remarkable hydrothermal stability in various pervaporation and gas separation processes. The availability of wide range of α,ω-bis(trialkoxysilyl)alkane and 1,4-bis (triethoxysilyl)benzene precursors allows tuning of membrane properties such as pore size and chemistry. This chapter presents an overview of the synthesis and application of hybrid organosilica microporous membranes in liquid and gas separation processes. After a concise discussion of the history of solgel-derived microporous ceramic membranes for molecular separations, the solgel chemistry of bridged silsesquioxanes and all relevant processing steps needed to obtain a supported microporous films suitable for molecular separations are discussed. The performance of these membranes is correlated with the membrane compositional properties, such as nature, stiffness and length of the bridging group, and details of the solgel process

Migrazioni e Commercio nell'area del partenariato euro-mediterraneo

The pillar of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, signed in Barcelona in 1995, is a free trade area between the European Union (at 15) and the Mediterranean Partner Countries (at 12). The most important target of this trade policy is to reduce migrations from the South to the North. The assumption of the EU policy makers is that trade an migration are substitutes, in other words when trade, and in particular exports, increase, migration should go in the opposite direction. Models of trade give ambiguous predictions on this issue - they depend on income differentials, skill distributions, trade liberalizations, etc. - and there are not empirical studies on the potential effect of trade liberalization on migrations in the area of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. We try to fill this gap estimating a gravity model equation of bilateral migrations on bilateral exports from the Southern countries to those of the North over four decades, 1960-2000. We use five different specifications: from basic linear regression to different country of origin and of destination fixed effect models that control for unobserved determinants of migration. We find that South-North exports and migrations in the Mediterranean area are in the short run and medium run certainly not substitutes. This is in line with other empirical studies on the relationship between trade and migration between countries at different level of economic development. Since the economic integration in the Mediterranean region has not been completed, like in the case of North American Free Trade Agreement Area (NAFTA), we cannot estimate the long term effect of trade on migration

Women in crime

In recent decades, women’s participation in the labor market has increased considerably in most countries and is converging toward the participation rate of men. Though on a lesser scale, a similar movement toward gender convergence seems to be occurring in the criminal world, though many more men than women still engage in criminal activity. Technological progress and social norms have freed women from the home, increasing their participation in both the labor market and the crime market. With crime no longer just men’s business, it is important to investigate female criminal behavior to determine whether the policy prescriptions to reduce crime should differ for women