Omoniyi Alimi, David Maré, Jacques Poot (p)

Eveline van Leeuwen

For several decades, until the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand experienced rapid growth in immigration. In this paper we analyse the contribution of immigration to changes in income inequality. Using microdata from consecutive population censuses between 1986 and 2013, we apply sub-group and Shapley-value-regression decompositions of inequality to calculate contributions of eight population groups (defined by skill level and migration status) to inequality. However, immigration is strongly spatially selective. While, on average, one in four New Zealand residents is foreign born, in Auckland - the largest metropolitan area – more than 40 percent of the population is foreign born. Hence, when analysing income inequality, it is important to distinguish between metropolitan and non-metropolitan urban areas. We find that increases in the immigrant share of the population have a spatially-universal income-inequality-increasing effect. However, the contribution of change in the immigrant-group-specific income distribution varies across urban areas: it is inequality reducing in non-metropolitan areas and inequality increasing in metropolitan areas. Changes in the skill distribution, including those brought about by immigration, have also important implications for the distribution of income. High-skilled groups (whether New Zealand born or foreign born) have made inequality-increasing contributions to the distribution of income, particularly in metropolitan areas.

Pierpaolo Parrotta (p), Marianna Marino, Vincenzo Carrieri

Jacques Poot

This paper contributes to the literature on socially responsible behavior and health outcomes by providing unprecedented evidence on the effect of mafia pervasiveness on pre-pandemic child mandatory and non-mandatory vaccine coverage, Covid-19 cases and deaths among Italian provinces (NUTS-3 regions).

Our interest in the pervasiveness of mafia has roots into its historical role of social entity offering private protection to individuals and firms in lawless areas as documented in Gambetta (1993). Acting as an alternative provider of capital and jobs, mafia has de facto filled the vacuum left by the authority of Italian state in certain territories (Gambetta & Reuter, 1995; Bandiera, 2003). Moreover, the power and social influence of mafia has expanded beyond the historical regional boundaries (Pinotti, 2015; Buonanno & Pazzona, 2014) by corrupting public officials, by weakening and infiltrating local government (Daniele & Geys, 2015; Di Cataldo & Mastrorocco, 2016), and by financing and appropriating private enterprises especially during the recent downturns (Le Moglie & Sorrenti, 2020). Obstructing the access and provision of public goods (Acemoglu et al. 2020), mafia-type criminal organizations fueled the resentment, skepticism and distrust in the central and local government, enlarging thus their social consensus in segments of the population more likely to obey to mafia’s social norms, often contrasting with legal and socially desirable behavior. Consistent with the aforementioned arguments, we hypothesize that the observance of mafia’s social norms has lowered people’s adherence to strict hygiene and distancing recommendations, and in getting vaccinated.

To proxy mafia pervasiveness, we use the 2009 transcrime mafia index: a composite indicator that includes convictions for mafia-type organization crimes, murders committed by mafia members, city councils dissolved because of mafia infiltration, and assets seized due to organized crime (Le Moglie & Sorrenti, 2020). In addition, we control for pre-determined levels of trust and “bridging” social capital, being both key determinants of socially responsible behavior as confirmed in the literature (Guiso et al., 2011; Rocco et al, 2014; Bartscher at al., 2021).

Relying on both panel FE and DID estimation approaches, we find evidence of a significant and sizeable negative relationship between high mafia-intensity provinces and pre-pandemic child mandatory and non-mandatory vaccine coverage. Furthermore, we find significantly higher Covid-19 cases and mortality rates in provinces more affected by mafia pervasiveness. Several robustness checks corroborate our main results. We deem our study may stimulate further analysis on the nexus between mafia and health-related outcomes.

Eveline van Leeuwen (p), Lieke van Lisseldorp, Johan van Ophem

Pierpaolo Parrotta

A better understanding of perceived justice and fairness is essential for many reasons, including the enhancement of political legitimacy in different European regions. We adopt a peripheralisation perspective to examine the influence of inequality at the national level and the effects of differences in economic performance and institutional quality at the regional level. We use the European Social Survey (2019) to derive justice components, which serve as dependent variables of the subsequent Complex Samples General Linear Models. We conclude that a favourable (regional) economic climate, next to institutional quality plays a crucial role in tackling the perceived unfairness of peripheralisation.