In this paper, I introduce new estimates of Anglo-Italian labour productivity levels in manufacturing during the late 1930s. The relatively high level of detail of the industrial censuses of the two countries, allows to retrieve also input data, enabling the use of the more sophisticated double...

Guinaudeau and Jankowski reassess our recent study on the use of strategic descriptive representation among political parties in Europe. The authors successfully replicate the vast majority of our findings and perform a number of additional robustness checks. They claim that one of our key...

This research paper critically examines the role and impact of media in Weimar and Nazi Germany. The Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the subsequent Nazi regime (1933-1945) were crucial periods in German history marked by significant political, social, and cultural transformations. Media played a...

We still have limited knowledge about the long-term effects of fascism on European democracies. European countries experienced cycles of violence between the 1960s and 1980s. Can such violence be explained by legacies of mobilization during fascism? We study whether and how the Italian fascist...

Can weakened religiosity lead to the rise of totalitarianism? The Nazi Party set itself up as a political religion, emphasizing redemption, sacrifice, rituals, and communal spirit. This had a major impact on its success: Where the Christian Church only had shallow roots, the Nazis received...

Die NSDAP kopierte nicht nur von Anfang an den Stil der Arbeiterbewegung, sondernverlagerte auch den Schwerpunkt ihrer Propaganda ab 1928 von nationalistischer Außenpolitikauf innenpolitische und soziale Fragen. Bis 1932 wurde diese Ausrichtung jedoch durchkein wirtschaftspolitisches Programm...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: “Persecution Perpetuated” (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

The fall of fascism in Italy in 1943-1944 was followed by the issuance of laws and decrees that made former fascist politicians ineligible for political office. We use this setting as a quasi-natural experiment that exogenously disrupted then prevalent corporate political connections. We find...

Can weakened religiosity lead to the rise of totalitarianism? The Nazi Party set itself up as a political religion, emphasizing redemption, sacrifice, rituals, and communal spirit. This had a major impact on its success: Where the Christian Church only had shallow roots, the Nazis received...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

The recent ascent of right-wing populist movements in many countries has rekindled interest in understanding the causes of the rise of Fascism in inter-war years. In this paper, we argue that there was a strong link between the surge of support for the Socialist Party after World War I (WWI) and...

This paper shows yearly estimates of income inequality in Italy from 1900 to 1950. By constructing dynamic social tables, we comprehensively assess inequality across all components of Italian society. In a context of declining inequality across Europe, interwar Italy reveals a singular...

Guinnane and Hoffman (subsequently GH) comment on two of our papers: Voigtländer and Voth: "Persecution Perpetuated" (2012, subsequently PP) and Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth: Bowling for Fascism (2017, subsequently BF). They allege that our econometric results are fragile and depend on...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....

Survivor testimonies link survival in deadly POW camps, Gulags, and Nazi concentration camps to the formation of close friendships with other prisoners. We provide statistical evidence consistent with these fundamentally selective testimonies. We study the survival of the 140 thousand Jews who...

A burgeoning literature on repression against civilians argues that exposure to violence changes victims' identities by strengthening attachment to the in-group and creates downstream effects for political and social behaviour that persist across generations. In this paper, we ask whether...

"Accounting for the Holocaust reveals how accounting practices allowed the attempted annihilation of Jews by the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists to be carried out with machine-like efficiency and devoid of any moral considerations. This largely hidden aspect of the Holocaust will allow a...

Der spätere Nobelpreisträger Friedrich A. von Hayek publizierte kurz vor dem D-Day des Jahres 1944 sein analytisches Meisterstück The Road to Serfdom. Er präsentierte damit eine präzise Beschreibung der wesentlichen gesellschaftspolitischen Ursachen, die zu der nationalsozialistischen...

Can heroes legitimize strongly-proscribed and repugnant political behaviors? We exploit the purposefully arbitrary rotation of French regiments to measure the legitimizing effects of heroic credentials. 53% of French line regiments happened to rotate under a specific general, Philippe P'etain,...

This paper uses a historical natural experiment - the case of Nazi Operational Zones (OZ) in Italy during WWII - to shed light on the legacy of foreign state repression. While the rest of Northern Italy was placed under Fascist rule, the OZ were de facto annexed by Nazi Germany and subjected to...