Historical Traditions of Civicness and Local Economic Development*

Abstract

The paper investigates the importance of history for local economic performance in Italy by studying the role of social capital, which refers to trust, reciprocity and habits of co-operation that are shared among members of a local community. The paper presents a test based on worker productivity, entrepreneurship, and female labor market participation. Using as instruments regional differences in civic involvement in the late 19th century and local systems of government in the middle ages, it shows that social capital does have economic effects.

Symmetric and asymmetric effects of proximities. The case of M&A deals in Italy

“…Mostly important for the case of Italy, we are not controlling for the quality of institutions in the origin and destination regions. In the case of Italy, a vast empirical literature has documented the significant lower endowment of social capital in the South which is systematically associated with lower economic outcomes, a more fragile civil environment and a lower quality of local institutions with respect to the Northern part of the country (Daniele and Marani, 2011;De Blasio and Nuzzo, 2010;Di Liberto and Sideri, 2011). Therefore, our indicator…”

Explaining the Size Distribution of Plants: An Approach Based on Civic Capital

“…See section 2 for a definition of civic capital and its relationship with trust. 2 Other studies which use these measures include Buonanno et al (2009), andde Blasio andNuzzo (2010).…”

“…Accordingly, efficient law enforcement both produces high levels of civic capital and favors economic activity, resulting in large plants. Similarly to Buonanno et al (2009) andde Blasio andNuzzo (2010), we use historical data to overcome the problem of reversed causality and omitted variables. In particular, we use information on civic capital at the middle of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.…”

Civic Capital and the Vertical Integration of Service Provision: Evidence from Italy.

“…See for example (Guiso et al, 2004;Buonanno et al, 2009;de Blasio and Nuzzo, 2010). The reason for why we use electoral turnout in referenda rather than in normal political elections is explained in Putnam (1993), p. 93.…”