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.

adverse effects on competition and legal businesses; on the other hand, there are benefits through
(shadow) employment and income in less-developed areas, as well as benefits through relations of
political clientage. We focus on counterfeiting and its economic effects on trade in Italy during the
economic crisis. Using a newly built regional dataset and a dynamic panel model, we find evidence
of the dual impact of counterfeiting. The production (and exchange) of fake goods depresses the