Rails of Progress? Exploring the Nexus between Railroad Access and Innovation in Italy (19th-20th Centuries)

Marco Martinez, Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta

No 19812, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the nexus between railroads and inventive activities in Italy in the period 1861-1936. We develop two new georeferenced datasets on railway stations and patents. By adopting the staggered difference in differences identification strategy by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021), we show that the impact of railroad construction on innovation is only visible for the first wave of construction of the period of the Destra storica (1861-1878), when the network was expanded following a state building strategy. However, these effects became noticeable only after more than two decades and concern mostly independent inventors and low-quality patents.

Keywords: Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L92 N73 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12
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