Paolo Pinotti

I am Professor of Economics and Endowed Chair in the Economic Analysis of Crime at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of Bocconi University, where I direct the CLEAN Centre for the Economic Analysis of Crime. I am also Coordinator of Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, a research institute on labor and social policies in Europe. 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, organized crime, discrimination, 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, and Review of Economic Studies. In 2016, I was awarded the “AEJ:Applied Economics” Best Paper Award by the American Economic Association.
Clicking on heaven's door: the effect of immigrant legalization on crime
THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 2017I 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.