Abstract This paper employs provincial data to study the relationship between several crime typologies, namely murder, robbery, extortion and fraud, and economic output in Italy. We employ a spatial econometric approach where the spatial proximity is defined by a measure of physical distance between locations, in order to take into account possible spill-over effects. The results of the spatial estimation suggest that criminal activities, namely murder and robbery, exhibit a negative impact on Italian gross domestic product while fraud and total crime do not affect economic output and that there are beneficial spill-overs from neighbouring provinces.