Hard to Forget: Long-lasting E ffects of Social Capital Accumulation Shocks

Francesco Amodio

No 105-2012, AICCON Working Papers from Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit

Abstract: Very few contributions have dealt with the analysis of specific determinants of social capital accumulation and destruction. Even if limited in scale, the analysis of precise historical events can help in discerning the dynamics of social capital and its persistence. The case of Italian unification is here considered. I focus on three historical episodes of conflict, which caused the death of a big fraction of population in three specific locations. When towns in the areas surrounding these locations are considered, I show how each kilometer further from the hit town is associated with a significant increase in the electoral turnout in European Parliament elections held in 1979-1999. I believe these differences to reflect differences in social capital endowments across towns. The pattern is confirmed when World War I casualties are used as a measure of social capital at the beginning of the XXth century. Results are robust to the inclusion of a number of controls and to several robustness checks.

Keywords: social capital; political participation; social capital persistence; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2012-06-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aiccon.it/file/convdoc/wp105.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.aiccon.it/file/convdoc/wp105.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.aiccon.it/file/convdoc/wp105.pdf)

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:ris:aiccon:2012_105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AICCON Working Papers from Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paolo Venturi ().