By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...

Recent research has highlighted that in the last few years the evolution of regional disparities in many European states has become pro-cyclical. This represents a change with respect to the predominantly anti-cyclical pattern of the 1960s and 1970s. This paper addresses the question of whether...

This paper sets out to examine the impact of the quality of local and regional governments on the returns of investment, focusing on the returns of EU structural and cohesion funds. Despite the widespread belief that the quality of government affects the returns of public investments, whether...