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Agricultural productivity, banditry and criminal organisations in post-unification Italy

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  • Alfredo Del Monte
  • Luca Pennacchio

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show that in the period after Italian unification in 1861 twovery important criminal phenomena in Southern Italy, banditry and organised crime, became rooted in the structure of rural and land organisation. We develop a simple model to show that organised crime has a greater incentive to offer protection when economic development and land productivity are relatively high and the state is unable to provide adequate protection for property rights. The model is tested on the provinces in Southern Italy in the late nineteenth century and then on Sicilian towns in the early 1900s. Otherfindings suggest that banditry spread in the poorest areas of the South where land ownership was highly concentrated and productivity was low. On the other hand, organised crime developed only in the wealthiest areas. Finally, there was an inverse relation between the intensity of banditry and that of organised crime.

Suggested Citation

  • Alfredo Del Monte & Luca Pennacchio, 2012. "Agricultural productivity, banditry and criminal organisations in post-unification Italy," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 347-378.
    • Handle: RePEc:mul:jqat1f:doi:10.1427/38529:y:2012:i:3:p:347-378
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    Cited by:

    1. Giuseppe De Feo & Giacomo Davide De Luca, 2017. "Mafia in the Ballot Box," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 134-167, August.
    2. Marina Cavalieri & Massimo Finocchiaro Castro & Calogero Guccio, 2020. "Does the Fish Rot from the Head? Organised Crime and Educational Outcomes in Southern Italy," Working papers 97, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Giuseppe De Feo & Giacomo Davide De Luca, 2020. "Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(2), pages 537-581.
    4. Alfredo Del Monte, 2016. "Le cause della differente diffusione della criminalit? organizzata nel Mezzogiorno," STUDI ECONOMICI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(118-119-1), pages 271-311.
    5. Oleg V. Pavlov & Jason M. Sardell, 2023. "Economic Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: A Simulation Feedback Model," Papers 2304.07975, arXiv.org.
    6. Cavalieri, Marina & Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo & Guccio, Calogero, 2023. "Organised crime and educational outcomes in Southern Italy: An empirical investigation," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

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