RELATIONAL GOODS AT WORK!CRIME AND SPORT PARTICIPATION IN ITALY. EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA REGIONAL ANALYSIS FOR THE PERIOD 1997-2003.

Raul Caruso, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Istituto di Politica Economica

Abstract

What is the impact of sport participation on a society? The aim of this paper is tackling this point by studying whether or not there is a relationship between sport participation and crime. A panel dataset have been constructed for the twenty Italian regions over the period 1997-2003. Results show that: (i) there is a robust negative association between sport participation and property crime; (ii) There is a robust negative association between sport participation and juvenile crime; (iii) There is a positive association between sport participation and violent crime, but it is only weakly significant. Interestingly, there is also a complementary effect between education and sport participation on crime.