Trust Thy Neighbour: The Effect of Yakuza Offices in the Neighbourhood

• In Event: Neighborhood Structure, Institutions, and the Persistence of Disorder

Abstract

Yakuza, the collective entity representing Japanese criminal syndicates, is a long-established governance-type criminal organisation. Yakuza is not illegal, hence associated syndicates openly establish their territorial presence through offices from which they run business and activities. Critically, yakuza syndicates not only engage in illegal activities but also pivot through the local regular economy, playing an institutional role on illegal and semi-legal markets and actors, both as economic facilitators and community regulators. The economic and welfare impact of yakuza and other governance-type organized crime in the neighbourhoods they inhabit is a debated topic. This paper addresses the extant discussion by leveraging on a recent regulatory change which enforced tighter restrictions on yakuza’s territorial grasp. Using novel machine-learning methods of causal estimation and an original dataset of yakuza territorial presence we examine the effects of yakuza offices’ closure on the changes of the micro-area business structure and employment dynamics.

Authors

• Andrea Giovannetti, Australian Catholic University

• Martina Baradel, Oxford University / Nagoya University