This paper hypothesizes that the demise of the 19th century's European class structure reflects a deliberate transformation of society orchestrated by the capitalists. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it argues that the demise of this class structure was an outcome of a cooperative, rather than...

This paper presents experimental evidence about how individuals learn from information that comes from inside versus outside their ethnic group. In the experiment, Thai subjects observed information that came from Americans and other Thais that they could use to help them answer a series of...

The aim of this paper is to trace a map of Italian local social capital endowments. It focuses on the “structural” dimension of the concept, as identified with social networks. The analysis is based on a dataset collected by the author including about two hundred indicators of five main...

We use a set of established growth models, which simultaneously include human capital and R&D, to show that the effect of mortality rate in human capital accumulation is quantitatively more important than the effect of perfectly guaranteed patents on research. First, we show that the effect of...

The contribution of this paper to the social capital literature is twofold. Drawing on the Italian data, it firstly provides a new framework for measurement, allowing to build indicators for five different components of the multidimensional concept of social capital. Secondly, it provides a...

Early states like China, India, Italy and Greece have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades than have later-comers to agriculture and statehood like New Guinea, the Congo, and Uruguay. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic...

There is no consensus about which variables, apart from income per capita, serve to characterize or define economic development, or guide its teaching. This paper proposes a simple and operational definition that combines the level of income per capita and the distribution of income. An economic...

This paper is the Italian version of “Measuring Social Capital in Italy”, presented at the Third Forum for Young Researchers promoted by the Italian Sociological Association and at the Second Workshop for Young Economists organized by the University of Bologna. The contribution of this paper...

This paper is the Italian version of “Measuring Social Capital in Italy”, presented at the Third Forum for Young Researchers promoted by the Italian Sociological Association and at the Second Workshop for Young Economists organized by the University of Bologna. The contribution of this paper...

This paper studies the Gold Standard in Portugal. It was the first country in Europe to join Great Britain in 1854. The principle of free gold convertibility was abandoned in 1891. For the purposes of a macroeconomic study, we also extended the analysis up to 1913. Our study points out the...