Paolo Pinotti
I am Dean of the Faculty at Bocconi University, Professor of Economics at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, and Endowed Chair in the Economic Analysis of Crime. I am the founder of the CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime at the INSPIRE Research Center and I am the Coordinator of Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti. Before moving to Milan, I obtained my Ph.D. from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2009, and I worked at the Research Department of the Bank of Italy between 2007 and 2011.
I hold an ERC Consolidator Grant for the project "Clean Evidence on Dirty Deeds" and I am the PI on the project “Dark Side of the Money”, funded by a PRIN Grant from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.
I am an applied economist with a strong interest in social phenomena that are relevant from both a scientific and a policy perspective, such as immigration, discrimination, crime, and mass media. I study these phenomena through the lens of economic principles and employing state-of-the-art econometric methods. My research has been published in leading scientific journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and Review of Economic Studies. In 2016, I was awarded the “AEJ:Applied Economics” Best Paper Award by the American Economic Association.
Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits and Domestic Violence
REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES, 2025Making Subsidies Work: Rules vs. Discretion
ECONOMETRICA, 2025There's more to marriage than love: the effect of legal status and cultural distance on intermarriages and separations
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 2025Gender and bureaucratic corruption: evidence from two countries
JOURNAL OF LAW ECONOMICS & ORGANIZATION, 2023Rules, discretion, and corruption in procurement: evidence from Italian Government contracting
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY MICROECONOMICS, 2025The Effect of Job Loss and Unemployment Insurance on Crime in Brazil
ECONOMETRICA, 2022Clicking on heaven's door: the effect of immigrant legalization on crime
THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 2017Trust, firm organization, and the pattern of comparative advantage
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS, 2016Legal status and the criminal activity of immigrants
AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL. APPLIED ECONOMICS, 2015Politicians at Work. The Private Returns and Social Costs of Political Connections
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION, 2013I have been teaching principles and methodologies for empirical policy evaluation at both graduate and undergraduate level. I also like to give public lectures and teach short courses to policy makers and practitioners outside academia.