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In this paper we study the impact of regulatory complexity, a measure of institutional quality, on the GDP, on per capita income and on the growth rate of the Italian regions. For comparative reasons we also use the duration of civil disputes as a further indicator of institutional quality used in the regressions as an alternative to the indicator of regulatory complexity. From the theoretical point of view, we use the approach of negative co‐ordination externalities, among the four sources of regulatory production that are at work at the same time. Our approach may be applied in all the countries with a multi‐level government system. Using the random effects and quantile regressions models we are able to quantify the effects of an improvement in institutional quality on the GDP and the growth rate, making a comparison between the results obtained using regulatory complexity or the duration of civil disputes as covariates. We also check for spatial dependence among variables. Econometric analysis supports the theoretical assumption that regulatory complexity is an impediment to the growth of regional GDP and per capita income. The main finding of our analysis is that a reduction in regulatory complexity would be more effective than a reduction in the duration of civil disputes in increasing the income and growth rate. This result could be useful for the policy‐maker because by reducing regulatory complexity we may obtain a considerable by‐product in the shorter duration of civil disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of agrarian change have long debated the nature of capitalist transition in the countryside, including whether the deepened interlinking of local, national, and transnational economic activities make past trajectories of agrarian transformation unlikely to reoccur in the present. This essay makes the case that Giovanni Arrighi's work has much to add to our understanding of the agrarian question in global historical perspective. We focus in particular on Arrighi's research on trajectories of change in the Calabrian region of southern Italy, and his essay "Capitalist Development in Hostile Environments." In this piece, Arrighi and co‐author Fortunata Piselli develop two key insights. The first is that the pathways to capitalism are diverse, non‐linear, and historically contingent such that within one country—or, in the case of Italy, a single subnational region—multiple trajectories can be found. The second is that the outcomes of capitalist transition vary based on a country's position in the international hierarchy of wealth, meaning that agrarian transformation is compatible with both economic development and underdevelopment. We describe the three methodological principles that enabled Arrighi to develop his analysis of capitalist transition and explain how the papers collected in this special issue reflect and extend the Arrighian approach to agrarian political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is considered to be one of the most important engines of growth, and its determinants are widely investigated. Several theories of entrepreneurship have been proposed and tested in the literature, most of them focusing on 'hard factors,' i.e., determinants related to the quality/quantity of inputs and to the size of the market. In this paper, I investigate how the interaction between hard and soft factors may shape the entrepreneurial behavior of individuals. In particular, the aim of the paper is to explore the links among the structure of the family, land inequality at the beginning of the twentieth century, and subsequent entrepreneurship in Italian provinces. Using a novel data set on the Gini coefficient of land inequality in 1931, sharecropping in 1911, and the classification of family structures in 1950, I test their relevance to explaining entrepreneurship. I find that high land concentration with strong family ties reduces the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. Furthermore, the diffusion of sharecropping contracts is associated with higher entrepreneurship rates. Taken together, these results point to a central role played by the organization of agriculture in promoting entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses non-compulsory secondary school enrolment of immigrant students in Italy. Such enrolment implies a voluntary decision and can influence future career paths in the labour market. The results show that the enrolment rates of immigrants are lower than those of Italians. Immigrant students prefer vocational schools and shorter-term education. The pattern of these preferences remains constant across the throughout Italy, even if Italy presents strong differences in the economic development of its regions, with rich Northern and poor Southern regions. The enrolment rates of second-generation immigrant students differ from those of first-generation students, but the size of this component is still too small to indicate a clear trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The objective of this paper is to improve our understanding on how the former Italian prime minister formed and kept his exceptional political consensus despite the never-ending series of scandals in which he has been involved. Specifically, we carry out an empirical assessment of the relationship between trust in television and trust towards the prime minister. Many Italian commentators argue that television does not exert any particular bias on public opinion. If the assumption of television's irrelevance were true, one could reasonably expect to find no significant relationship between trust in TV and trust in Mr Berlusconi as prime minister. Contrary to this hypothesis, our empirical analysis shows that trust in television was the strongest predictor of trust in the Italian prime minister in Spring 2011, thus suggesting that Mr Berlusconi's media empire played a key role in the building of his political consensus. This result is based on probit and ordered logit estimates and is robust to different specifications. However, there are three reasons for which this finding could be interpreted as the fruit of a spurious correlation. First, it is difficult to distinguish the effect of trust in television from that of other phenomena that potentially influence trust in the prime minister. To deal with this problem, we include in the main equation a wide set of individual and household control variables. Second, individual effects, such as individuals' exogenous shocks, may be correlated with trust both towards television and the prime minister, thus creating a common bias. Third, as we explain in the paper, it is reasonable to assume the existence of reverse causality. To deal with the last two problems, we turn to instrumental variables ( IV) estimates. When we address endogeneity in IV estimates, trust in television remains the best (most significant and strongest) predictor of trust in the prime minister. By contrast, we find that the dependent variable is significantly and negatively correlated with educational qualification, trust in the judicial system and with a measure of tolerance towards immigrants. Even if these results pass robustness checks and hold in IV estimates, it must be remarked that the cross-sectional design of the research dictates extreme caution in the interpretation of correlations as causal relationships. Nonetheless, the paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first econometric investigation into the role of television in individuals' political opinions, with a focus on trust towards the Italian prime minister. The relationship between television and political attitudes and beliefs is an important topic for economics, in view of the unquestionable role that political institutions, particularly the government and the prime minister, play in a country's economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a surprising gap in the economic literature on social capital. First, we lack studies addressing the effects of social capital on those facets of development that can contribute in making growth more sustainable in the long run, like, for example, human development and social cohesion. Second, it is still unclear what type of networks may exert a positive effect on the different dimensions of development. In particular, the literature has not yet provided a rigorous assessment of the role of strong family ties, that are generally referred to as a form of bonding social capital causing backwardness. This paper investigates the relationship between the three types of social capital so far identified by the literature (i.e. bonding, bridging and linking), and the “quality” of economic development, as expressed by human development and an index of social well-being summarizing the state of health of urban ecosystems, public services, gender equality, and labour markets. The empirical analysis is articulated in two stages carried out by means of a multivariate analysis and of a structural equations models analysis. The results suggest that the linking social capital shaped by voluntary organizations has significantly positive effect on human development, but is irrelevant for social well-being. The bonding social capital shaped by strong family ties negatively affects human development, but significantly fosters the quality of life, mainly through a reduction of workers' precariousness. The bridging social capital of weak ties connecting friends and acquaintances follows the pattern of bonding social capital: it is reinforced by strong family ties and has significantly negative effect on human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]