Organised Crime and Technology

Abstract

This paper shows that organised crime harms technological development. We provide evidence that forced resettlement of bosses promoted the mafia's rooting in northern Italy. With forced resettlement as an exogenous source of variation, we unveil that mafias cause a reduction in technology levels. Moving from the technology stock to a flow generating it-innovation-we demonstrate that mafias stifle innovation. We argue that without mafia, Nature selects agents for their innovation capacity. Instead, with mafia, agents face an alternative strategy: relate with mafia; this strategy, infringing property rights and competition, hinders innovation. Using evolutionary dynamics, we show that while mafias decrease innovation, proper sanctions/indemnities can address the problem.

Local Government and Innovation: The Case of Italian Provinces

“…With the term "province" we refer to the provincial administrative level labeled with the NUTS 3 code by Eurostat.7 Titolo V -Le Regioni, le Province e i Comuni http://www.governo.it/costituzione-italiana/ parte-seconda-ordinamento-della-repubblica/titolo-v-le-regionile-province-e-i.8 https://dait.interno.gov.it/territorio-e-autonomie-locali/sut/1963.pdf 9. The sole exception is the (part of the old) province of Trieste, which was reintegrated into the Italian national territory as a result of the London Memorandum in 1954. http://freeterritorytrieste.…”