Neither Communes nor Fiefs: King Owned Towns, Right Negotiations and Long Run Persistence. The Case of South Italy

Elisa Borghi, Fabio Gatti and Donato Masciandaro ()

No 22182, BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers from BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: According to the literature, historical episodes of local self-governing institutions can explain why differences in socio-economic performances among different territories can persist over centuries. Such assumption has been tested comparing free city-states (Communes) and feudal towns in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and United Kingdom. This paper explores a third and novel category: the King-owned towns. King-owned towns (KOTs) were present in South Italy when the Kingdom delegated jurisdictional and fiscal powers to the town ruling class, creating a self-governance setting, where the community representatives systematically implemented articulated right negotiations with the Crown, which in turn influenced the evolutions of the municipal statutes of their towns. We interpret this collective action as a mechanism that can explain the persistence effects. Empirically, we find that, given a town, its past king-owned experience is correlated with today outcomes, both in terms of current economic performances and civil capital. These results offer evidence that the KOT status is more similar to the Commune experience than to the fief experience.

Keywords: Self-Governance; Long Run Persistence; Economic History; Political Institutions; Culture; Economic Geography; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H10 K00 N44 O43 O52 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-geo, nep-his and nep-ure
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