Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe estimate the effectiveness of a government‐led anti‐domestic‐abuse campaign launched in the midst of the covid‐19 pandemic on the number of calls to the Italian domestic violence helpline. In the week after the start of the campaign, we document a sharp increase in the number of calls. By exploiting geographical variation in the exposure to the campaign ads aired on public TV networks, we find that greater exposure is associated with an increase in the number of calls after the launch of the campaign. However, the effectiveness of the media campaign is hindered in areas where gender stereotypes are stronger.

We study the impact of broadband penetration on social capital in the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits a technological feature of the telecommunication infrastructure that generated substantial variation in the quality of Internet access across households. The speed of a domestic connection rapidly decays with the distance of a user's line from the network's node serving the area. Merging information on the topology of the network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital from 1997 to 2017, we show that access to fast Internet caused a significant decline in civic and political engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration crowded out several dimensions of social capital.

Exploiting high-frequency data from the Italian anti-violence helpline and a unique geolocalized dataset on killings of women, we show that the news coverage of a femicide triggers an increase in calls to the helpline. The effect is detectable in the week following the news and in the province where the femicide has occurred. These findings are consistent with a model in which the news of a femicide increase expectations about future intimate partner violence in case no call is made.