This paper explores the historical roots of land inequality in Sicily and its relationship with the Mafia presence. Using earthquake intensity as an instrumental variable to address endogeneity concerns, we find that greater land inequality in the past leads to a higher incidence of Mafia...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that...