Organized Crime, Violence and Support for the State

Happy to announce that the working paper "Organized Crime, Violence and Support for the State", written by Gianmarco Daniele ano Paolo Pinotti is out! 

The study finds that exposing a representative sample of 6,000 individuals in Italy to journalistic images of organized crime-related violence increases trust towards institutions and state performance. These findings are in contrast with prior studies that have identified a negative correlation between victimization and trust in the state. The authors attribute this new evidence to a "rally around the flag" effect, rather than to the decrease in homicide rates occurring over the last decades – in fact, individuals wrongly believe that homicides have increased during such period.