Civic Capital and Development: Italy, 1951-2001

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 development and that this reflected some causality running from the former to the latter. We also find that the impact of civic capital was greater in the period immediately after the Second World War and gradually waned in the following decades.