Past dominations, current institutions and the Italian regional economic performance

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We study the connection between economic performance and the quality of government institutions for the sample of 103 Italian NUTS3 regions, including new measures of institutional performance calculated using data on the provision of different areas of public services. In order to address likely endogeneity problems, we use the histories of the different foreign dominations that ruled Italian regions between the 16th and 17th century and over seven hundred years before the creation of the unified Italian State. Our results suggest that past historical institutions play a significant role on the current public administration quality and show that the latter makes a difference to the economic performance of regions. Overall, our analysis confirms that the quality of institutions matters for development, and that history can be used to find suitable instruments.JEL Classification: O11, O43, C26

EU Regional Policy and the Neighbour's Curse: Analyzing the Income Convergence Effects of ESIF Funding in the Presence of Spatial Spillovers

“…The role of structural backwardness as a hampering factor to economic growth and the functioning of regional policy relates to earlier contributions, such as Ederveen et al . (), Di Liberto and Sideri () and Rodríguez‐Pose and Garcilazo (). These studies particularly refer to the importance of the institutional setup in funded regions as a pre‐condition for funding effectiveness and associated regional growth.…”

“…20 Part A of Figure 3 provides an overview of regions with a significantly negative ESIF funding effect conditional on their gap to steady-state income and the funding intensities in their spatial neighbourhood. The role of structural backwardness as a hampering factor to economic growth and the functioning of regional policy relates to earlier contributions, such as Ederveen et al (2006), Di Liberto and Sideri (2015) and Rodríguez-Pose and Garcilazo (2015). These studies particularly refer to the importance of the institutional setup in funded regions as a pre-condition for funding effectiveness and associated regional growth.…”

Gold and silver mining in the 16th and 17th centuries, land titles and agricultural productivity

“…The rationale underlying this instrument follows the literature on the long-term persistence of historical institutions and their effects on contemporary economic outcomes (see, e.g., La Porta et al, 1998;Acemoglu et al, 2001;Grosjean, 2011;Di Liberto and Sideri, 2015). We argue that rents from point resources (i.e.…”

Endogenous Institutions and Economic Outcomes

“…Different from this and the related literature comparing permanent within‐country institutions to explain present‐day development (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou ; Gennaioli et al . ; Di Liberto and Sideri ; Becker et al . ; Gorodnichenko and Roland ), I identify for the first time the separate current roles of culture and inclusive political institutions by reconstructing their evolution over time and pinpointing those among the determinants of past institutions that are conditionally independent from present‐day economic development.…”

“… While a series of recent theoretical papers clarifies that cultural norms inherited from earlier generations deeply shape current culture (see Tabellini ), an expanding body of empirical contributions highlights the persistence of political infrastructures (Acemoglu and Johnson ; Di Liberto and Sideri ). …”