Ciancio, Alberto
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Publication The Impact Of Immigration Policies On Local Enforcement, Crime And Policing Efficiency(2017-01-01) Ciancio, AlbertoFollowing a period of increasing immigration enforcement under George W. Bush's administration, the Obama administration reversed immigration policies and issued strict new guidelines to relax enforcement in 2011. The purpose of this paper is to exploit this natural experiment in the enforcement of the immigration laws to study the effects of federal immigration policies on local enforcement, crime and policing efficiency. I use a unique and new data set obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request on several steps of the deportation process. I estimate how the drop in federal immigration enforcement affected county level enforcement, local crime rates and policing efficiency. My empirical analysis suggests that Democratic counties complemented federal policies, by reducing their immigration enforcement, whereas Republican counties tended to maintain higher levels of enforcement and to not react much to the guidelines. Employing a triple-difference approach, I find that Democratic counties with higher non-citizen population shares saw greater increases in clearance rates, a measure of policing efficiency, with no increase in crime rates. The results indicate that reducing immigration enforcement did not increase crime and rather led to an increase in policing efficiency, either because it allowed police to focus efforts on solving more serious crimes or because it elicited greater cooperation of non-citizens with police.Publication Curtailing COVID-19 on a Dollar-a-Day in Malawi: Implications for the Ongoing Pandemic(2021-03-15) Kohler, Iliana V.; Kämpfen, Fabrice; Ciancio, Alberto; Mwera, James; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Mwapasa, VictorUtilizing population-based data from the COVID-19 phone survey (N=2,262$) of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) collected during June 2nd--August 17th, 2020, we investigate behavioral, economic and social responses COVID-19 and focus on the crucial role that community leadership and trust in institutions play towards shaping these responses. We argue that the effective response of Malawi to limit the spread of the virus was facilitated by the engagement of local leaders to mobilize communities to adapt and adhere to COVID-19 prevention strategies. Village heads (VHs) played pivotal role in shaping individual's knowledge about the pandemic and the adaption of preventive health behaviors and were crucial for mitigating the negative economic and health consequences of the pandemic. We further show that trust in institutions is of particular importance in shaping individuals' behavior during the pandemic, and these findings highlight the pivotal role of community leadership in fostering better compliance and adoption of public health measures essential to contain the virus. Overall, our findings point to distinctive patterns of pandemic response in a low-income sub-Saharan African rural population that emphasized local leadership as mediators of public health messages and policies. These lessons from the first pandemic wave remain relevant as in many low-income countries behavioral responses to COVID-19 will remain the primary prevention strategy for a foreseeable future.Publication Correcting Pessimistic Mortality Beliefs May Reduce Vaccine Hesitancy, Malawi Study Shows(2024-09-11) Purcell, Helene; Ciancio, Alberto; Mwera, James; Delavande, Adeline; Mwapasa, Victor; Kohler, Hans-PeterHelping people accurately understand their risk of dying or surviving may support public health campaigns years later. A new strategy for improving health behavior is supported by a randomized controlled trial from the longrunning Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH) that showed that a 2017 intervention to correct misconceptions about mortality risk was linked to higher COVID-19 vaccination rates five years later. Vaccination was 7.8 percentage points higher in the intervention than the control group. Effects spread to families of intervention participants, whose siblings had higher vaccination rates than the control group.