Immigrant crime and legal status: evidence from repeated amnesty programs
利用意大利1990-2005年间多次大赦计划造成的移民合法化数量差异，研究发现大赦后合法移民比例高的地区非欧盟移民犯罪率下降更多，但效果较小且不持久。
Do general amnesty programs lead to reductions in the crime rate among immigrants? We answer this question by exploiting cross-sectional and time variation in the number of immigrants legalized by the enactment of repeated amnesty programs between 1990 and 2005 in Italy. We address the potential endogeneity of the ‘legalization treatment’ by instrumenting the actual number of legalized immigrants with alternative predicted measures based on past amnesty applications patterns and residential choices of documented and undocumented immigrants. We find that, in the year following an amnesty, regions in which a higher share of immigrants obtained legal status experienced a greater decline in non-EU immigrant crime rates, relative to other regions. The effect is statistically significant but relatively small and not persistent. In further results, we fail to find any evidence of substitution in the criminal market from other population groups—namely, EU immigrants and Italian citizens—and we observe a small and not persistent reduction in total offenses.