The impact of agribusiness crimes on food prices: evidence from Italy
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The impact of agribusiness crimes on food prices: evidence from Italy Gaetano Perone1 Received: 13 June 2018 / Accepted: 22 October 2019 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract From the 1990s the Italian agribusiness sector is increasingly threatened by a new and dangerous phenomenon: organized crime in the agribusiness sector. The socalled “Agromafia” imposes its control throughout the whole agricultural supply chain, from production to retail, passing through the processing industry, transports and large-scale distribution. In this paper we examine the relationship between ecocrimes and consumer food and non-alcoholic drinks price index for the 20 Italian regions and 80 Italian provinces in the 1998–2016 period. At regional level, as a proxy for the Agromafia’s activities, we build an ad hoc eco-criminal index for every region using data annually elaborated from Legambiente. At province level, as a proxy for Agromafia’s activities, we use eight specific variables: extortions, counterfeiting, contraband, forest fires, all types of fires, money laundering, suspicious money transfers, and an ad hoc eco-criminal index. The analysis shows that the Agromafia can consistently affect the whole agribusiness sector, causing an increase in food prices, especially in south of the country. The ten most affected provinces by phenomenon register a food consumer price index about 12% higher than the least ten affected provinces. By the contrast, in the center-north of Italy money laundering seems to reduce food consumer prices through the reinvestment of illicit proceeds in firms with strong cost advantages. Keywords Organized crime · Agromafia · Extortions · Money laundering · Food prices JEL classification K42 · Q11 · Q13
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s4088 8-019-00165-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Gaetano Perone [email protected] 1
Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Via dei Caniana n. 2, Bergamo, BG 24127, Italy
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Economia Politica
1 Introduction The Italian agricultural sector with its 1.24 million units of labor (ISTAT 2018b, p. 5) is undoubtedly one of the fundamental foundations of the whole local industrial system and commands the international esteem for excellence. In fact, in December 2016 Italy had the highest number of recognized certifications (DOP,1 IGP,2 and STG3) in the UE-28, with 291 top-quality gastronomic specialties and 83,695 certified economic operators (ISTAT 2018a, p. 2). In 2017, the whole agricultural sector generated an added value of about 31.54 billion euros, with a relative weight of 17.11% on the Eu-28 agricultural value added, which places Italy at the top of the European ranking (ISTAT 2018b, p. 13). Nonetheless, since the 1970s, the agri-food sector has suffered from serious structural problems that have limited its potential and a healthy development. These concern the progressive loss of agricultural ground4 (Bernetti et al. 2013;
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