THREE ESSAYS ON MIGRATION AND ORGANIZED CRIME

This doctoral thesis consists of three independent essays on the economics of international migration and organized crime. Chapter 1 explores the relationship between immigration and voting for the far-right party in Finland. I find that one percentage point increase in the share of foreign citizens in a municipality decreases Finns Party's vote share by 3.4 percentage points. The far-right votes lost to immigration are captured by the two pro-immigration parties. Turning to potential mechanisms, the negative effect is only present in municipalities with high initial exposure to immigrants. Moreover, I provide some evidence for welfare-state channel as a plausible mechanism behind the main result. Chapter 2 studies the public health effects of a recent immigrant regularization program in the United States -- the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). I find that DACA increased insurance coverage among eligible immigrants. Despite the increase in insurance coverage, there is no evidence of significant increases in health care use, although there is some evidence that DACA increased demand for mental health services. After 2012, DACA-eligible individuals were also more likely to report a usual place of care and less likely to delay care because of financial restrictions. Finally, I find some evidence that DACA improved self-reported health and mental health among eligible individuals. Chapter 3 analyzes the origins and consequences of the Russian Mafia (vory-v-zakone). Using a unique web scraped data, I first show that Russian Mafia originated in the Gulag - Soviet system of forced labor camps which operated in the USSR primarily during the 1920s-1950s Stalin era. Second, I document that the distance to the nearest camp is a strong negative predictor of mafia presence in Russia's communities in the early-to-mid 1990s. Finally, I show that the communities with mafia presence in the 1990s experienced a dramatic rise in crime driven by turf wars which erupted among rival clans around 1993 and lingered on until the late 1990s. This is suggested by a sharp increase in attacks against the members of Russia's economic elite in places with mafia presence.