Socio-Cultural Variables and Economic Success: Evidence from Italian Provinces 1951-1991

Giovanni Peri

The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, 2004, vol. 4, issue 1, 36

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.

Keywords: Civic Spirit; Murder Rates; Economic Development; Employment Growth; Italian Provinces. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1534-5998.1218 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:topics.4:y:2004:i:1:n:12

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejm/html

DOI: 10.2202/1534-5998.1218

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics is currently edited by Arpad Abraham and Tiago Cavalcanti

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().