Crime and Entrepreneurship in Uruguay

Seminario del IECON: Santiago Acerenza (Universidad ORT)

This paper studies the causal impact of Crime on entrepreneurial activity in Uruguay. Constructing a novel dataset that merges the rate of firm creation and destruction with the level of criminality at a very granular level (precincts) from 2014-2019, we find that violent crimes reduce firm birth rate via an entry-deterrence channel.