Can religiosity affect the emergence and migration patterns of scientists? We focus on 19th-century France, a period in which the Catholic Church had embraced a particularly antiscientific attitude, and we exploit variation in intensity of Catholicism. Using data on the places of birth and death...

This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier to the diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the Second Industrial Revolution...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural environment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...

We study how cultural distance affects the rejection of imposed institutions. To do so, we exploit the transplantation of Piedmontese institutions on Southern Italy that occurred during the Italian unification. We assemble a novel and unique dataset containing municipal-level information on...

What determines the rejection of exogenously imposed institutions? To address this question, we exploit the transplantation of institutions that occurred when southern Italy was annexed to Piedmont, during the Italian unification process of the 1860s. We assemble a novel dataset on episodes of...