Long lasting differences in civic capital : evidence from a unique immigration event in Italy

Bracco, Emanuele and De Paola, Maria and Green, Colin (2015) Long lasting differences in civic capital : evidence from a unique immigration event in Italy. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 120. pp. 160-173. ISSN 0167-2681

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Abstract

A range of evidence exists demonstrating that social capital is associated with a number of important economic outcomes such as economic growth, trade and crime. A recent literature goes further to illustrate how historical events and variation can lead to the development of differing and consequential social norms. This paper examines the related questions of how persistent initial variations in social capital are, and the extent to which immigrant groups do or do not converge to the cultural and social norms of their recipient country by examining a unique and geographically concentrated immigration event in 16th century Italy. We demonstrate that despite the substantial time since migration these communities still display different behavior consistent with higher civic capital than other comparable Italian communities. Moreover, we demonstrate that this difference does not appear to have changed over the last 70 years. For instance, differences in voter turnout apparent in the late 1940s remain in the 21st century. This latter finding has implications for our view of the likelihood of assimilation of immigrant groups to local norms, particularly in cases of large-scale migration.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 120, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.10.003
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400/1407
Subjects:
?? social capitalelectoral turnoutmigrationpersistenceorganizational behavior and human resource managementeconomics and econometricsd72j15z10 ??
ID Code:
76130
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
19 Nov 2015 11:32
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
17 Dec 2023 01:31