This paper shows that railroad building in Russia, as in Europe and the US in the nineteenth century, improved the value of land, a classic benefit of transportation investment in largely agrarian countries. From a database constructed for this paper, we use cross-sectional data for the fifty...

This study investigates the origins of the guild revolts in late medieval central Europe. At first, using newly compiled city level data, their temporal evolution and spatial distribution is discussed. Afterwards, the paper provides a historical discussion and empirical analysis of their...

Urban governance has been considered a key feature in the political and economic development in Europe in the medieval and early modern times. This paper aims to explore the different institutional settings that characterized the community organization in the Kingdom of Naples, with a particular...

This study provides evidence that culture understood as values and beliefs moves very slowly. Despite massive institutional change, values and beliefs in transition countries have not changed much over the last 20 years. Evidence suggests that culture is affected by the long run historical past,...

According to the literature, historical episodes of local self-governing institutions can explain why differences in socio-economic performances among different territories can persist over centuries. Such assumption has been tested comparing free city-states (Communes) and feudal towns in...

The persistence literature in economics and related disciplines connects recent outcomes to events long ago. This influential literature marks a promising development but has drawn criticism. We discuss two prominent examples that ground the rise of the Nazi Party in distant historical roots....