IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/aiccon/2012_105.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hard to Forget: Long-lasting E ffects of Social Capital Accumulation Shocks

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Amodio

    (Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit)

Abstract

Very few contributions have dealt with the analysis of specific determinants of social capital accumulation and destruction. Even if limited in scale, the analysis of precise historical events can help in discerning the dynamics of social capital and its persistence. The case of Italian unification is here considered. I focus on three historical episodes of conflict, which caused the death of a big fraction of population in three specific locations. When towns in the areas surrounding these locations are considered, I show how each kilometer further from the hit town is associated with a significant increase in the electoral turnout in European Parliament elections held in 1979-1999. I believe these differences to reflect differences in social capital endowments across towns. The pattern is confirmed when World War I casualties are used as a measure of social capital at the beginning of the XXth century. Results are robust to the inclusion of a number of controls and to several robustness checks.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Amodio, 2012. "Hard to Forget: Long-lasting E ffects of Social Capital Accumulation Shocks," AICCON Working Papers 105-2012, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
  • Handle: RePEc:ris:aiccon:2012_105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aiccon.it/file/convdoc/wp105.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luca Anderlini & Dino Gerardi & Roger Lagunoff, 2007. "Social Memory and Evidence from the Past," Working Papers gueconwpa~07-07-01, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatsh0to2 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Rafael Di Tella & Sebastian Galiant & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2007. "The Formation of Beliefs: Evidence from the Allocation of Land Titles to Squatters," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 209-241.
    4. Francesco Bianchi, 2013. "Regime Switches, Agents' Beliefs, and Post-World War II U.S. Macroeconomic Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 463-490.
    5. Guido Tabellini, 2010. "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 677-716, June.
    6. Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier, 2010. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization," Post-Print halshs-00754788, HAL.
    7. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatsh0to2 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatsh0to2 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Alberto Alesina & Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc & Paola Giuliano, 2015. "Family Values And The Regulation Of Labor," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 599-630, August.
    10. Bisin, Alberto & Verdier, Thierry, 2001. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and the Dynamics of Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 298-319, April.
    11. Durante, Ruben, 2009. "Risk, Cooperation and the Economic Origins of Social Trust: an Empirical Investigation," MPRA Paper 25887, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Alberto Bisin & Giorgio Topa & Thierry Verdier, 2004. "Cooperation as a Transmitted Cultural Trait," Rationality and Society, , vol. 16(4), pages 477-507, November.
    13. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano, 2011. "Family Ties And Political Participation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 817-839, October.
    14. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano, 2010. "The power of the family," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 93-125, June.
    15. Nathan Nunn & Leonard Wantchekon, 2011. "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3221-3252, December.
    16. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Civic Capital as the Missing Link," NBER Working Papers 15845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iatsh0to2 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. The long shadow of human capital destruction
      by Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo on 2012-08-06 19:57:18

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Giampaolo Lecce & Laura Ogliari & Tommaso Orlando, 2017. "Resistance to Institutions and Cultural Distance: Brigandage in Post-Unification Italy," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2097R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Dec 2017.
    2. Bracco, E. & De Paola, M. & Green, C.P., 2015. "Long lasting differences in civic capital: Evidence from a unique immigration event in Italy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 160-173.
    3. Montresor, Giulia & Schiavon, Lucia, 2025. "Social capital and vaccination compliance: Evidence from Italy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    4. Giampaolo Lecce & Laura Ogliari & Tommaso Orlando, 2022. "State formation, social unrest and cultural distance," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 453-483, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francesco Giavazzi & Ivan Petkov & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2019. "Culture: persistence and evolution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 117-154, June.
    2. Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier, 2010. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and Socialization," Post-Print halshs-00754788, HAL.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano, 2015. "Culture and Institutions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(4), pages 898-944, December.
    4. Ljunge, Martin, 2014. "Trust issues: Evidence on the intergenerational trust transmission among children of immigrants," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 175-196.
    5. Alesina, Alberto & Giuliano, Paola, 2014. "Family Ties," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 177-215, Elsevier.
    6. Martin Ljunge, 2015. "Social Capital and the Family: Evidence that Strong Family Ties Cultivate Civic Virtues," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(325), pages 103-136, January.
    7. Luca Di Gialleonardo & Mauro Marè & Antonello Motroni & Francesco Porcelli, 2020. "Family Ties and the Pandemic: Some Evidence from Sars-CoV-2," Working papers 100, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    8. Ang, James B. & Fredriksson, Per G., 2018. "Culture, legal heritage and the regulation of labor," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 616-633.
    9. Muhammad Tariq Majeed & Shamsa Kanwal, 2019. "The Global Integration and Transmission of Social Values: A Case of Family Ties," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(2), pages 703-729, January.
    10. Anastasia Latina & Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2020. "Corruption and the Cultural Evolution of Family Ties," Discussion Papers in Economics 20/04, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    11. Marè, Mauro & Motroni, Antonello & Porcelli, Francesco, 2020. "How family ties affect trust, tax morale and underground economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 235-252.
    12. Xu, Xu & Jin, Xin, 2018. "The autocratic roots of social distrust," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 362-380.
    13. Vincenzo Galasso & Paola Profeta, 2013. "From Family Culture to Welfare State Design," CHILD Working Papers Series 14, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    14. Durante, Ruben, 2009. "Risk, Cooperation and the Economic Origins of Social Trust: an Empirical Investigation," MPRA Paper 25887, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Mauro Marè & Antonello Motroni & Francesco Porcelli, 2015. "Family Ties and Underground Economy," Working papers 16, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    16. Borowiecki Łukasz, 2014. "Historical Roots of Generalized Trust in Polish Society," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 42(1), pages 121-137, June.
    17. Kravtsova, Maria & Libman, Alexander, 2023. "Historical family structure as a predictor of liberal voting: Evidence from a century of Russian history," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(2).
    18. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "The Scope of Cooperation: Values and Incentives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 905-950.
    19. Buechel, Berno & Hellmann, Tim & Pichler, Michael M., 2014. "The dynamics of continuous cultural traits in social networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 274-309.
    20. Chenchen Fan & Mingming Jiang & Bo Zhang, 2024. "Beyond cultural norms: how does historical rice farming affect modern firms' family control?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(363), pages 770-808, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social capital; political participation; social capital persistence; Italy;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ris:aiccon:2012_105. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Paolo Venturi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aiccoea.html .

    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.