Ricerc@Sapienza

The impact of crime and counterfeiting on Italian trading firms has been rather neglected. Nevertheless, they are important drivers of trade in countries like Italy, whose economic activity is characterized by small/medium-sized firms, highly exposed to the risk of infringement of intellectual property rights by criminal activities of counterfeiting, and, at the same time, not averse to production/exchange of counterfeited goods.

On the basis of a newly built regional panel data set that considers both the evolution of employment indicators in the Italian regions and indicators of counterfeiting activities and criminality, we empirically explore the link between joblessness and criminality. During the period of a deep economic and financial crisis we observed that, unexpectedly, unemployment and inactivity rates rise together. The paper studies whether and to what extent, in the considered period, criminal activities of counterfeit and other forms of crime have affected unemployment and inactivity rate.