Social-overhead construction in Italy's regions, 1861–1913

Abstract

This article presents estimates of social-overhead construction in Italy's regions. The new-construction series point to a largely common cycle in non-railway work, and largely idiosyncratic bursts of railway building. Maintenance doubles as an index of the underlying stock, which cannot be calculated from the flows alone; one finds limited convergence, and only in railway infrastructure. Industrial and overall growth are increasingly correlated both with the initial stock, and with its increment. Direct measures of welfare improvements are uncertain, but the relative increases in draftees’ mean heights correlate in particular with social-overhead investment.

Citation

Ciccarelli, C. and Fenoaltea, S. (2008), "Social-overhead construction in Italy's regions, 1861–1913", Field, A.J., Sundstrom, W.A. and Clark, G. (Ed.) Research in Economic History (Research in Economic History, Vol. 26), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0363-3268(08)26001-5