Three essays in quantitative economic history

This paper investigates the historical determinants of social capital in Italy, widely seen at the root of the North-South divide. By focusing on the rural economic structure of Italy during the “liberal age” (1861-1911) and in the interwar period, I challenge the view that social capital is uniquely determined by the communal experience in the Middle Ages (Putnam et al., 1994; Guiso et al., 2016). The analysis is based on a newly compiled database containing original data on land inequality and tenancy contracts, as well as previously unexamined measures of social capital in the present day. The measures of social capital are divided into two distinct groups: 1) civic capital measures identifying a prosocial behavior in civil society; 2) a less proactive behavior associated to civic mindedness and compliance with rule of law. On the one hand, I find that a high share of day workers (proxy for short-term agrarian contracts) is negatively associated with the rule of law measures. On the other hand, areas with a lower land concentration (but less robust impact) fostered higher civic capital levels of the first kind. I also present new IV estimates that link the formation of big latifundia with a huge mass of day and seasonal laborers to the presence of malaria disease at the province-level. The effects are robust even after controlling for the fact that the land ownership structure is not randomly determined.