Socio-Cultural Variables and Economic Success: Evidence from Italian Provinces 1951-1991
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Giovanni Peri
Abstract
Italy makes for an interesting case-study of the impact of socio-cultural variables on economic performance: under a common institutional framework differences in socio-cultural attitudes across Italian provinces correspond to large differences in their economic success. We analyze the effects of social variables on long-run provincial economic performance during Italy's era of economic take-off (1951-1991). Since socio-cultural traits in Italy are deeply rooted in local history and traditions, we argue that their persistence produces an (at least partly) exogenous determinant of economic prosperity. While we find rather weak evidence that civic involvement (Social Capital as defined in Putnam, 1993) fosters economic success, we do find strong evidence that the presence of organized crime (proxied by murder rates at the beginning of the period) is associated with low economic development, even after controlling for other economic and geographic factors.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Advances Article
- Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero
- Contributions Article
- Aggregate Price Changes and Dispersion: A Comparison of the Equity and Goods and Services Markets
- Dissemination of Technology in Market and Planned Economies
- Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?
- Is the U.S. Aggregate Production Function Cobb-Douglas? New Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution
- What Does It Take to Explain Procyclical Productivity?
- Endogenous Distribution, Politics, and the Growth-Equity Tradeoff
- Explaining Speculative Expansions
- Tariffs, Entry Regulation and Markups: Country Size Matters
- Schumpeterian Growth, North-South Trade and Wage Rigidity
- Do Federal Reserve Policy Surprises Reveal Superior Information about the Economy?
- Bailouts and Bank Runs in a Model of Crony Capitalism
- Multiple Equilibria in Heterogeneous Expectations Models
- Topics Article
- Empirical Perspectives on Long-Term External Debt
- Output Gap Uncertainty and Monetary Policy During the 1970s
- The UK Household Sector Demand for Risky Money
- The Relationship between Stock Prices, House Prices and Consumption in OECD Countries
- Labor Market Performance and Flexibility: Which Comes First?
- A Simple Locally Interactive Model of Ergodic and Nonergodic Growth
- Do Minimum Wages Raise the NAIRU?
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- The Dynamics of Fertility and Growth: Baby Boom, Bust and Bounce-Back
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