In Italy, Patti Territoriali (Territorial Pacts) are one of the main government-sponsored programmes to foster growth in disadvantaged areas. A territorial pact is an agreement among the local authorities and representatives of civil society (mainly entrepreneurs and trade unions) of a number of...

In the last decade, and especially in the course of the recent global economic slowdown, the gap between southern and northern industry has widened. Industrial investment and employment decreased more sharply in the South than in the rest of Italy, and the contribution of the southern regions to...

The volume collects the essays presented at the conference "Social capital, economics and political economy" held in Rome on 27 June 2014. The first session analyzes definition and measurement issues about social capital. The second and third sessions examine its determinants and economic...

In the last two decades the socio-economic literature has highlighted the importance of social capital (an ample set of social relations and cultural attitudes) for economic growth and the wellbeing of citizens. The literature broadly suggests a negative correlation between social capital and...

In this paper we use data from the Bank of Italy�s Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) to study what Italian households think of tax evasion, and to estimate their propensity to evade taxes. This propensity turns out to be larger for the self-employed than for employees; within the...

Putnam (1993) argues that (i) center-northern Italy has developed faster than southern Italy because the former was better endowed with social capital; and (ii) that the endowments of social capital across Italian territories have been highly persistent over centuries. This paper provides an...