{"title":"The impact of crime on firm entry","authors":"Nicolò Barbieri, Ugo Rizzo","doi":"10.1111/jors.12628","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The article investigates the effect of crime on firm entry rates in Italian provinces over the period 2007–2016. The extant literature focuses mainly on the relationship between crime and the sorting of new businesses. The present paper contributes to this stream of work by estimating the effect of crime on the overall propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities across a national territory. We measure the extent to which property and violent crime affect firm entry rates using an instrumental variable approach in which the instrument for criminal activity is the effective abortion rate. Our findings suggest that crime has a negative, sizable impact on firm entry. The results are robust to alternative instrumental variables and firm entry indicators. This empirical exercise emphasizes the need to consider loss of new business activities as a downstream effect when computing the social costs of crime.</p>","PeriodicalId":48059,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Regional Science","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jors.12628","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The article investigates the effect of crime on firm entry rates in Italian provinces over the period 2007–2016. The extant literature focuses mainly on the relationship between crime and the sorting of new businesses. The present paper contributes to this stream of work by estimating the effect of crime on the overall propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities across a national territory. We measure the extent to which property and violent crime affect firm entry rates using an instrumental variable approach in which the instrument for criminal activity is the effective abortion rate. Our findings suggest that crime has a negative, sizable impact on firm entry. The results are robust to alternative instrumental variables and firm entry indicators. This empirical exercise emphasizes the need to consider loss of new business activities as a downstream effect when computing the social costs of crime.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Regional Science (JRS) publishes original analytical research at the intersection of economics and quantitative geography. Since 1958, the JRS has published leading contributions to urban and regional thought including rigorous methodological contributions and seminal theoretical pieces. The JRS is one of the most highly cited journals in urban and regional research, planning, geography, and the environment. The JRS publishes work that advances our understanding of the geographic dimensions of urban and regional economies, human settlements, and policies related to cities and regions.