The award, which recognises outstanding research by authors who are no more than three years past their PhD defence, was presented to Mastrorocco and his co-author Arianna Ornaghi (University of Warwick) for their first research project: "Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behaviour in the United States".
The key finding of the research is that news coverage of local crime influences police behaviour. U.S.municipalities exposed to a 27% reduction in the probability of appearing in the news with a local crime story experienced an 8% decline in their violent crime clearance rate compared to municipalities not exposed to the change.