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This paper examines the evolution of consumption practices in Venice in the long eighteenth century through the combined use of post‐mortem inventories and household budgets. Although Italy experienced a period of relative decline between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, our findings suggest that Venetian households enjoyed a rich and vibrant material culture that was fully comparable with those of the most advanced European urban economies. However, although new products, practices, and fashions were adopted by Venetian society, the architecture of consumption did not undergo sudden and extreme changes; rather, consumption was gradually refined, following the path that it had begun during the Renaissance. We therefore argue that the Venetian economy did not experience a consumer revolution but, instead, consumer evolution. Moreover, this study shows that sophisticated consumption practices were not exclusive to the more dynamic economies of the continent but were widespread even in those regions that were victims of the Little Divergence. We thus suggest that the relationship between consumption development and economic development was not necessarily causal and that the diffusion of new consumption practices throughout society was a necessary, but insufficient, prerequisite for economic take‐off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Italy is a case study in lowest-low fertility. Its internal heterogeneity is substantial and changing over time. The paper has two main aims. First, it aims at investigating whether the theoretical framework offered by the diffusionist perspective to fertility transition could still be relevant in explaining fertility changes in contemporary advanced societies. Second, the paper aims at investigating if and how the associations between fertility and a series of indicators of secularisation, female occupation, contribution of fertility of immigrants, and economic development change across space and over time. We make use of geographically weighted regressions and spatial panel regressions to model explicitly spatial dependence in fertility among Italian provinces over the period between 1999 and 2010. Results show that spatial dependence in provincial fertility persists even after controlling for standard correlates of fertility, consistently with a diffusionist perspective. Further, the local association between fertility and its correlates is not homogeneous across provinces. The strength and in some cases also the direction of such associations vary spatially, suggesting that the determinants of low fertility change across space. Finally, the associations between fertility and its correlates change over time. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [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]

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]

The present paper is a methodological contribution introducing a disaggregated physical productivity accounting framework in vertically (hyper-)integrated terms, establishing a direct correspondence between Supply- Use Tables and Pasinetti's (1973, 1988) theoretical magnitudes. As an empirical application, we computed productivity indicators and indexes of direction of technical change at the subsystem level for the case of Italy during 1999-2007. Our findings suggest that: (a) only 60 per cent of productivity growth accrued to real wages, (b) the degree of mechanization increased, (c) the most dynamic subsystems correspond to consolidated sectors, and (d) technical change has almost always been capital intensity increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-formulates and tests statistically a hypothetical law (HL) of capital accumulation that manifests itself in three scenarios for Italian economy. HL refines Verdoorn law and ‘Ricardian’ relationship between employment and returns; it generalizes neoclassical and Goodwinian models. Big cycles are not sustainable in inertia Scenario I. Lowering direct diseconomy of scale does not alter a non-trivial stationary state in stabilization Scenario II. Weakening an inverse relation between employment ratio and growth rate of capital intensity raises stationary relative labour compensation without deteriorating profitability in stabilization Scenario III. Stationary states with zero relative labour compensation are not economically relevant. [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]

The presence of crime is often considered as one of the most important social variables to be negatively associated with economic development. As is well known, Italy exhibits an economic divide between its central-northern and southern regions. This paper tries to ascertain whether there is also a divide in the diffusion of crime. To this purpose, Italian provinces are classified into groups by using a new methodology that combines cluster analysis with time series cross-section data. The statistical searches for groups are carried out by using an unbalanced time series cross-section data-set made up of yearly observations. The results of the analysis show that crime is not inextricably tied to certain geographical locations, and not others, as is usually believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a normative framework for the assessment of the distributional incidence of growth. By removing the anonymity axiom, such framework is able to evaluate the individual income changes over time and the reshuffling of individuals along the income distribution that are determined by the pattern of income growth. We adopt a rank dependent social welfare function expressed in terms of initial rank and individual income change and we obtain partial and complete dominance conditions over different growth paths. These dominance conditions account for the different components determining the overall impact of growth, that is the size of growth and its vertical and horizontal incidence. We then provide an empirical application for Italy: this analysis shows the distributional impact of the recent economic crisis suffered by the Italian populaltion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to measure the impact of migration flows on growth via their effect on structural change. To this extent we build an empirical growth model in which migration flows and intersectoral wage differentials can affect the speed of labour readjustment between sectors and, ultimately, total factor productivity and growth. By employing Italian regional data stemming over more than four decades we measure the effects of interregional migration on regional growth and convergence. The results confirm that migration in general, and in particular the content of human capital of moving workers, is a relevant factor in determining the speed of technological change and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the significance of historical traditions of civicness and local economic development in Italy. It examines the role of social capital, pertaining to trust, reciprocity, and habits of co-operation shared by local community members. Provided is an evaluation based on worker productivity, entrepreneurship, and labor market participation. It is concluded that social capital have economic impacts using regional differences in civic involvement in the late 19th century.

We study whether and to what extent the electoral dynamics in Italy over the 1994–2008 period can be explained by the development of economic factors associated with globalization. To measure the level of exposure to globalization for local labor markets, our main unit of analysis, we use the intensity of import competition from China and the presence of immigrants. Looking at parties' political positions and employing an estimation strategy that accounts for endogeneity and time‐invariant unobserved effects across local labor markets, we find that both immigration intensity and exposure to import competition from China have contributed positively to the electoral outcomes of far‐right parties, whereas only immigration intensity has increased the vote shares of right‐wing and traditionalist/authoritarian/nationalist parties. Some evidence, albeit not robust, shows that immigration may have also had a positive impact on far‐left parties, thus possibly further contributing toward political polarization. Moreover, electoral turnout has responded negatively to an increased presence of migrants. While the above effects seem to work through the mediation of labor markets, our results, especially those related to immigration, suggest that other mechanisms at the level of local communities are also at play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine cooperatives were relatively scarce in Europe before the Second World War, but by the 1980s accounted for more than half of all wines made in France, Italy, and Spain, the three major producer countries. Unlike Danish dairy cooperatives, whose success before the First World War was linked to their ability to improve product quality and compete in high-value niche markets, wine cooperatives are often associated with the production of large volumes of low-quality products. This article argues that the initial slow diffusion of wine cooperatives was caused by the difficulties of improving quality due to environmental conditions in European vineyards ('terroir') and measurement problems, rather than institutional shortcomings. Cooperatives only became widespread when the state found them a useful instrument to regulate markets, especially after 1950. The problems associated with poor wine quality were never resolved, and cooperatives have become increasingly uncompetitive in the market place, especially following the major decline in per capita consumption and shift towards premium wines from the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fundamental question of whether offshoring is value enhancing and, more specifically, whether Italian manufacturing firms that undertake offshoring benefit from higher productivity and profitability is explored. Using data from the tenth wave of the ' Survey on Manufacturing Firms' conducted by Unicredit- Capitalia, it was found that, compared with domestic firms, firms relocating activities to a foreign country have different characteristics, and 'better' firms might self-select into offshoring decision. To disentangle the effect of offshoring on firms' performances from the effect of firm characteristics, several variants of propensity score matching are used. A mild and insignificant positive effect of offshoring on profitability was found and also evidence of a statistically significant positive effect of offshoring on productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In the light of Italy's current economic stagnation, characterized by mass unemployment, especially in the south, the development of effective energy policies should be seen as an opportunity of reducing energy dependency, so as to increase competitiveness and sustainability. However, due to imbalances in development in the country, focus at the national level does not reveal particular characteristics of the different regions. In this context, the definition of specific energy actions should be based on information and analyses that refer to integrated and multi-level perspectives, such as regional and sectoral levels. Here we investigate, by applying a multi-scale integrated analysis of societal metabolism approach, the imbalanced nature of development, coupled with energy consumption, of two Italian regions, Veneto (northern Italy) and Abruzzo (southern Italy). Changes over time (1995-2007), related to both socio-economic and biophysical indicators, are analysed at multiple levels: region, economic sectors, and production and consumption. The results show that different structural changes and challenges are needed to meet energy efficiency, depending on the diverse level of regional development. They provide support for the future development of effective Regional Energy Plans, as well as to identify potential local barriers to achieving regional competitiveness and sustainability. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]