Abstract:

We study how local governments adjust fiscal policy following extreme acts of gender-based violence, and whether these adjustments are shaped by migration-related concerns. Combining administrative data on femicides with municipal budgets for Italian municipalities, we exploit femicides as shocks to the local salience of violence in staggered difference-in-differences models. Femicides trigger a sizable and persistent increase in security expenditures, concentrated on local police, with little corresponding expansion of prevention-oriented or social services for women at risk. The magnitude and persistence of the security response depend strongly on the perpetrator's nationality: when the perpetrator is foreign-born, the increase in police spending is much larger and more persistent. These patterns are consistent with high-profile crimes involving foreigners being more likely to be politicized and framed as public-order threats, reallocating scarce local resources toward visible security measures and away from policies more directly targeted at reducing gender-based violence.

Presentations:

• 37th Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Public Economics (SIEP), University of Naples Federico II (Italy), 2025

• 40th Annual Meeting of the European Economic Association (EEA), Bordeaux School of Economics (France), 2025

Abstract:

We estimate how local femicides affect voting and turnout in subsequent Italian parliamentary elections. We merge a geocoded registry of femicides (2011–2022) with municipality-level results for the national elections (2013, 2018, 2022) and exploit staggered exposure to a municipality’s first femicide. Using difference-in-differences estimators designed for staggered adoption, we find an electoral backlash against the Center-Right coalition: its vote share falls by about 2.2 percentage points, with offsetting gains for the Five Star Movement (+1.0 pp) and the Center-Left (+0.5 pp). Femicides also reduce participation: turnout declines by about 0.8 percentage points, with larger declines among women than men. Heterogeneity by nationality suggests that backlash is concentrated in cases involving Italian victims or Italian perpetrators; when the perpetrator is foreign, the Center-Right effect is small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. The results are consistent with electoral sanctioning and demobilization following salient failures of protection, with attribution shaped by identity cues.

Abstract:

We merge original daily data on admissions to an Anti-Violence Center (AVC) in Southern Italy with the local soccer team’s match results from 2013–2018 to test whether sporting events influence violence against women. We find that home defeats lead to a significant increase in AVC admissions, with effects amplified when the team was favored to win according to betting odds. The impact is concentrated in cases involving partners or ex-partners and among Italian perpetrators. Overall, the results indicate that salient emotional events can exacerbate dynamics within abusive relationships. Importantly, our evidence suggests that women’s decisions to seek formal support and begin a pathway out of violence are often made immediately after a tipping point in ongoing abuse.

Presentations:

• 37th Annual Conference of the Italian Society for Public Economics (SIEP), University of Naples Federico II (Italy), 2025