Research
"The Economic Origins of Government" (With Bob Allen and Leander Heldring)
American Economic Review, 113(10) (2023): 2507-45
Results Appendix | Data Appendix | Atlas Appendix
We test between cooperative and extractive theories of the origins of government. We use river shifts in southern Iraq as a natural experiment, in a new archeological panel dataset. A shift away creates a local demand for a government to coordinate because private river irrigation needs to be replaced with public canals. It disincentivizes local extraction as land is no longer productive without irrigation. Consistent with a cooperative theory of government, a river shift away leads to state formation, canal construction, and the payment of tribute. We argue that the first governments coordinated between extended households which implemented public good provision.
"The effect of settler farming on indigenous agriculture: Evidence from Italian Libya"
Economic History Review, 76(1) (2023): 31-59
Replication Files | Online Appendix
Winner of the TS Ashton for best paper in the EHR
What effect did the settlement of European farmers have on the indigenous agricultural sector during the colonial period? On the one hand, European immigrants imported skills and capital but, on the other, they took control of local resources. By looking at the short-term effect of Italian farming in colonial Libya, I shed new light on this question. Through regression analysis on a novel village dataset covering the entire country, I show that - in 1939 - proximity to Italian farms was associated with significantly lower land productivity relative to distant locations. Lower yields can be explained by the adoption of land-extensive cultivation, that was implemented by indigenous cultivators to counteract a labour drain operated by Italian farms through factor markets. The combined mitigating effect of monetary wages and land-extensive techniques only partially compensated for the fall in income linked to reduced land productivity.
"The Long-term Impact of Italian Colonial Roads in the Horn of Africa, 1935-2015"
Journal of Economic Geography, 22(1) (2022): 181-214
Replication Files | Online Appendix
This paper exploits the quasi-natural experiment provided by the extensive road network that was built across the Horn of Africa during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936-1941), to examine how a first-mover advantage in transportation affects the spatial distribution of economic activity in developing countries over the long-run. The results show that Italian paved roads rendered areas located within 10 km of them significantly more populated, urbanized and luminous around 2010, relative to comparable, more distant locations. Early road building lifted first-mover locations out of isolation and allowed for net welfare gains, thanks to a reduction in transport costs and specialization. To this day, first-mover locations continue to diverge from the control group, due to a coordination mechanism that led to an oversupply of governmental facilities in the post-colonial period.
"Towards an economic history of Italian colonialism"
Rivista di Storia Economica, 36(3) (2020): 299-343
This paper describes the evolution of the literature on Italian colonialism from its origins during the colonial period until present. It also provides a brief survey of the historical economics and economic history literature on Africa, with a particular focus on colonial policies. After highlighting a lack of quantitative scholarly work on the economics and economic history of Italian colonialism, the article identifies four areas of research that would improve our general understanding of the Italian colonial phenomenon, its effect on the Italian economy and the post-colonial developmental trajectories of Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, and Ethiopia. Because of the exceptional level of territorial expansion and colonial spending that took place during the fascist era, policies implemented during the 1930s should be the main focus of future research.
"The Economics of Civilian Victimization: Evidence from World War II Italy" (With Michela Giorcelli)
Working paper
To what extent does variation in the cost of misbehavior - namely soldiers’ accountability - impact the frequency and severity of civilian victimization in armed conflicts? To answer this question, we study civilian killings by Axis soldiers during the Italian Campaign in World War II (July 1943 - May 1945). The German command attempted to contain indiscriminate violence against civilians for strategic reasons, but plausibly exogenous variation in the movement of front lines negatively shocked its enforcement capacity, thus reducing soldiers’ accountability. In a stacked difference-in-differences estimation, we compare Axis troops’ behavior in treated municipalities that fell into the combat zone at frontline activation, with that of troops in comparison municipalities that remained either inside or outside the combat zone. We find that the activation of a new frontline increased indiscriminate violence, such as collective killings, murders unrelated to partisan attacks and against vulnerable population, by 10 folds. The effect is concentrated in municipalities located away from divisions’ headquarters (where the German command’s enforcement capacity was, at baseline, weaker) and where bombing and partisan presence were less intense (where Axis troops were safer), which provides further evidence in favor of an accountability mechanism. Crucially for policy, soldiers from less experienced units were more likely to change their behavior in response to a drop in accountability.
Working paper
By looking at the case study offered by the agricultural settlement of Italian farmers in Libya and their subsequent expulsion, this paper studies the effect of the removal of skilled farmers on agricultural productivity and commercialization. The Italians settled along the Libyan coast during the 1930s but were expelled in two steps: from Cyrenaica (East), in 1942, and from Tripolitania (West), in 1970. The second shock coincided with the oil boom, which provided the primary sector with new market opportunities. The paper employs a triple difference estimation on a newly assembled district-level dataset to study the effect of these expulsions. The removal of the Italian farmers led, in both cases, to a reduction in the level of commercialization and a return to the production of lower value, traditional field crops. The effect is persistent: today, former Italian districts are the least market-oriented, which represents a complete “reversal of fortunes” from the colonial times. If market incentives were high (as in coincidence with the 1970 expulsion), indigenous cultivators responded with a labor-intensive increase in grain production.
Work in Progress:
"The Negus and the monks: Monasteries, state formation and long-run development in Ethiopia, 1270-2020"
"Uncertainty and cooperation: evidence from colonial India" (With Maanik Nath)
"Do economic sanctions work? International sanctions and the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-6" (With Jari Eloranta and Elina Kuorelhati)