Francesca Calamunci

Francesca Calamunci is an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track, RTdB) in Economics at the University of Catania. She previously held roles including Assistant Professor (RTT) at Sapienza University of Rome and Postdoctoral Research Fellow positions at Sapienza University and the University of Catania. A Visiting Scholar at Bocconi University’s BAFFI CAREFIN − CLEAN Unit, she also served as a consultant for the World Bank.

Education: PhD in Economics, Management, and Statistics from the University of Messina (2019), supervised by Francesco Drago. Earlier postdoctoral research included studies on organized crime’s economic impacts and policy evaluations.

Research focuses on applied microeconometrics, labor economics, and the economic dimensions of crime, particularly organized crime’s infiltration into legal economies and anti-mafia policies. Key contributions include analyzing highway systems’ unintended crime effects and judicial administration’s role in firm performance post-mafia intervention.

Awarded the UniCredit Foundation Modigliani Research Grant (15th edition) and Fulbright-Falcone-NIAF Scholar (2017-2018), her work bridges theoretical economic models with real-world policy applications. She has contributed to policy evaluation frameworks assessing anti-crime measures’ socioeconomic outcomes.

Labs/Teams: Affiliated with IZA, GLO, and CLEAN Unit at Bocconi University. Active in interdisciplinary research networks addressing crime’s economic implications.