The paper models the incentives for a self-interested government to implement good policies. While good policies lead to investment and growth, they reduce the government's ability to increase supporters' consumption. The model predicts that resource abundance is conductive to poor policies and,...

We empirically investigate the role of civic capital (proxied by voter turnout) in Italy's economic development in the second half of the Twentieth century. Using a unique dataset at the city level, we show that over a fifty-year span voter turnout was steadily correlated with economic...

In 150 years, the trends in regional disparities in economic development within Italy have differed depending on whether they are gauged by longitude or by latitude. The disparities between western and eastern regions first widened and then closed; the North-South gap, by contrast, remains the...