As competition in the economic market yields consumer benefits, political competition is supposed to be welfare-enhancing for citizens in terms of providing information, increasing political choice, promoting competence and good behaviour. Even so, recent literature concerning the benefits of...

Using data on the 20 Italian regions for the period 1970-1995, I examine whether the presence of social capital, as reflected in a number of different measures collected by Putnam (1993), affects economic productivity. I find three types of effects. First, social capital, when treated as an...