IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jecgeo/v19y2019i3p619-653..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social capital and growth: causal evidence from Italian municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Corrado Andini
  • Monica Andini

Abstract

The macroeconomic effects of social capital are typically studied using data at country, region or, at most, province level of aggregation. However, social capital is defined by connections among agents who know each other and its effects, if any, should be detected at a more detailed level of spatial aggregation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study using longitudinal municipality-level data to investigate the causal link between social capital and growth. We extend earlier research by accounting for the endogeneity of all the covariates as well as unobserved heterogeneity. The evidence suggests that social capital has been a source of growth inequality in Italy between 1951 and 2001. The causal effect of social capital on growth is positive, on average, and stronger in the Centre-North of Italy. In addition, it was higher in the 1950s. The paper also presents local estimates of the growth return to social capital, which are of interest for specific sub-populations of municipalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Corrado Andini & Monica Andini, 2019. "Social capital and growth: causal evidence from Italian municipalities," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 619-653.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:19:y:2019:i:3:p:619-653.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lby024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mauro Caselli & Paolo Falco, 2019. "Your Vote is (no) Secret! How Low Voter Density Harms Voter Anonymity and Biases Elections in Italy," EconPol Working Paper 26, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    2. Roberto Ganau & Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose, 2023. "Firm‐level productivity growth returns of social capital: Evidence from Western Europe," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 529-551, June.
    3. Diemer, Andreas, 2023. "Divided we fall? The effect of manufacturing decline on the social capital of US communities," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120355, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Xindong Xue & W. Robert Reed & Robbie C.M. van Aert, 2022. "Social Capital and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis," Working Papers in Economics 22/20, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    5. Pilatin Abdulmuttalip & Hacıimamoğlu Tunahan, 2023. "The relationship between social capital and economic growth on a provincial and regional basis," Economics and Business Review, Sciendo, vol. 9(3), pages 153-180, October.
    6. Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés & Ganau, Roberto, 2023. "Firm-level productivity growth returns of social capital: Evidence from Western Europe," CEPR Discussion Papers 17979, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Xue, Xindong & Reed, W. Robert & Menclova, Andrea, 2020. "Social capital and health: a meta-analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    8. Mauro, Luciano & Pigliaru, Francesco & Carmeci, Gaetano, 2023. "Decentralization, social capital, and regional growth: The case of the Italian North-South divide," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social capital; growth; Italy; municipality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:19:y:2019:i:3:p:619-653.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/joeg .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.