
The Library
Measuring social capital: culture as an explanation of Italy's economic dualism
Tools
Galassi, Francesco L. (2001) Measuring social capital: culture as an explanation of Italy's economic dualism. European Review of Economic History, Vol.5 (No.1). pp. 29-59. doi:10.1017/S1361491601000028 ISSN 1361-4916.
![]()
|
PDF
WRAP_Galassi_Measuring_social_capital.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (345Kb) |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1361491601000028
Abstract
This article presents a quantitative test of the oft-repeated view that Italy's backward and poor South suffered from low ‘social capital’, a tendency to defect from co-operative engagements. The problem with such assertions is that they run the risk of taking as evidence in favour of the hypothesis the very observations that need to be explained. The analysis carried out in this work tries to break out of this impasse by analysing the conditions under which it was ex ante welfare-improving for farmers in early twentieth century Italy to join an unlimited liability rural co-operative bank which would give them access to cheaper credit, but also exposed them to the risk of their neighbours’ defection. These ‘co-ops’ are a prime testing ground for the cultural explanation in that they spread rapidly throughout Northern Italy in the late nineteenth century, but never gained a similar popularity in the South. I estimate the switching function for these co-ops in different parts of the country to test whether Northern and Southern farmers faced significantly different choice sets when making the decision to join. Identical choice sets but differential responses would of course favour the cultural explanation of the South's backwardness. The results suggest that for the same parameter values, the choice sets for North and South were indeed different.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions D History General and Old World > DG Italy |
||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Infrastructure (Economics) -- Italy, Quantitative research, Economics -- Mathematical models, Italy, Northern -- Economic conditions, Italy, Southern -- Economic conditions | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | European Review of Economic History | ||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 1361-4916 | ||||
Official Date: | April 2001 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Volume: | Vol.5 | ||||
Number: | No.1 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 29-59 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S1361491601000028 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |