CLEAN Seminar - Takuma Kamada (Osaka University)

The next CLEAN seminar will take place on Monday 13 March in distance at 4.30pm Italian time.

The presenter will be Takuma Kamada (Osaka University). The title of the paper is: "Bless or Curse for Organized Crime? The Long-Term Effects of an Energy Transition from Coal to Oil on the Yakuza" .

Abstract:

Resource abundance is known to invoke the demand for organized crime. Yet, less is known about how the supply of organized crime responds to the decline in the demand for natural resources. This study investigates the supply of organized crime by exploiting a negative labor demand shock in the coal mining industry in Japan. In the 1960s, an energy transition from coal to oil reduced the demand for coal mining jobs. The energy transition induced coal miners, with a lower opportunity cost of crime, to sort into Japanese gangsters, the yakuza. I show that conflicts among yakuza organizations intensified in areas that experienced greater mining job loss in the decades following the energy transition, and the effect on yakuza conflicts persisted over a half-century. Today, those areas are characterized by a greater number of yakuza organizations and yakuza members. The persistence likely arises because of (i) joining a yakuza organization being an irreversible investment and (ii) the intergenerational transmission of crime. Areas with more competing coal mining firms before the energy transition have more competing yakuza organizations. This study reveals that a labor demand shock can have long-lasting effects on organized crime. 

You may follow the event online via Zoom Meetings at the following link: https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/93968552765?pwd=cEJoTDFldWZNL3BZZWZNdWtzSXZwUT09  - passcode: 153790