American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 1 2017
Clicking on Heaven’s Door: The Effect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime
open access
Abstract
We estimate the effect of immigrant legalization on the crime rate of immigrants in Italy by exploiting an ideal regression discontinuity design: fixed quotas of residence permits are available each year, applications must be submitted electronically on specific “click days,” and are processed on a first come, first served basis until the available quotas are exhausted. Matching data on applications with individual-level criminal records, we show that legalization reduces the crime rate of legalized immigrants by 0.6 percentage points on average, on a baseline crime rate of 1.1 percent.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20150355
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 138-168
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref