Paolo Pinotti won the Bocconi Research Impact Award 2021 with a study, “Clicking on Heaven's Door: The Effect of Immigrant Legalization on Crime,” that shows how legalizing immigrants has the remarkable side effect of halving their crime rates. The professor, holder of the Endowed Chair in the Economic Analysis of Crime, came to his conclusion thanks to a statistically rigorous analysis, made possible by a curious aspect of Italian law: the click day that, in essence, assigns a certain number of residence permits every year, relying on the chronological order of online applications.

Read the full article