​Publications
  • Lanzara, G., Lazzaroni, S., Masella, P., and M.P. Squicciarini (2025) 'Discrimination and assimilation: Evidence from anti-Chinese sentiments in the United States’, Journal of Public Economics 249(September): 105450. [Download pdf] 

  • Lanzara, G., Lazzaroni, S., Masella, P., and M.P. Squicciarini (2024) 'Do Bishops Matter for Politics? Evidence from Italy’, Journal of Public Economics 238(October): 105177. [Download pdf] 

  • Abraham, S.S., Lanzara, G., Lazzaroni, S., Masella, P., and M.P. Squicciarini (2024) 'Spatial and Historical Drivers of Fake News Diffusion: Evidence from Anti-Muslim Discrimination in India’, Journal of Urban Economics 141: 103613. [Download pdf]

  • Buonanno, P., Cervellati, M., Lazzaroni, S. and G. Prarolo (2022) 'Historical Social Contracts and their Legacy: A Disaggregated Analysis of the Medieval Republics’, Journal of Economic Growth 27: 485-526. [Download pdf] –52
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  • Lazzaroni, S. and N. Wagner (2016) 'Misfortunes never come singly: structural change, multiple shocks and child malnutrition in rural Senegal’, Economics and Human Biology 23(December): 246–262. [Download pdf]
                       [Working Paper] and [Policy Brief] available as part of the Pathways to Resilience in Semi-Arid Economies [PRISE] research project

  • Bergeijk, P.A.G. van and S. Lazzaroni (2015) ‘Macroeconomics of Natural Disasters: Strengths and Weaknesses of Meta-Analysis versus Review of the Literature’, Risk Analysis 35(6): 1050-1072.  [Download pdf]
 
  • Lazzaroni, S. and P.A.G. van Bergeijk (2014) ‘Natural Disasters Impact, Factors of Resilience and Development: A Meta Analysis of the Macroeconomic Literature’, Ecological Economics 107(11): 333-346. [Download pdf]


Working Papers 
  • An Economic Theory of the Evolution of the States System, and Evidence for Europe 1000-1800  [CEPR DP] [pdf]
    (with M. Cervellati, G. Prarolo and P. Vanin) [Revision requested at the Journal of the European Economic Association]
    We provide a theory and empirical evidence on the evolution of the state system in pre-industrial Europe. We study sovereign polities with a fiscal, regulatory and military capacity that is imperfect and declining in space. Ruling elites make strategic non-cooperative investments in state capacity to maximize rents. The resulting territorial competition shapes the equilibrium evolution
    of the state system. Increasing productive potential imply changes in the type, size and number of polities and impact the distribution of economic activity across space. We assemble geo-referenced yearly data on all sovereign polities ruling over Europe 1000-1800. We document highly non-monotonic patterns of (dis)aggregation of political geography and transition phases with spikes in wars prior to the emergence of modern territorial countries. Estimates of the impact of political geography on local (city) growth document a changing role of type and size of polities and a reversal of the role of centrality within polities.​

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  • Economic Shocks and Assimilation Policies: Phylloxera and Educational Expansion in French Algeria [pdf] 
    (with G. Lanzara, P. Masella, and M. P. Squicciarini)
    This paper studies the impact of a shock, the phylloxera crisis in 19th-century France, on assimilation policies towards the native population of French Algeria. In particular, assembling a novel dataset on French MPs and their parliamentary speeches, we find that MPs coming from areas hit harder by the phylloxera, were more likely to: i) use keywords related to the impact of phylloxera and wine production; ii) express greater interest and support towards policies aimed at educating the native population. The latter pattern becomes visible approximately ten years after the phylloxera crisis, consistent with the view that organizing production requires time.

  • MONARCHY vs REPUBLIC: Historical Evidence on Individual Preferences and Their Roots
    (with M. Cervellati and G. Plevani) [Draft coming soon]
    ​In a unprecedented and still unique instance of self-determination in nation building, the institutional form of the state at the moment of democratization in 1946 Italy has been chosen with a referendum held in universal franchise. The vote, involving around 25 million people including women and a large majority of men voting for the very first time, offers a unique opportunity to study individual preferences over democratic institutions in the population at large. We study how the exposure to republican and monarchic rule in historical times shaped individual preferences for free institutions during democratization. We provide a measurement of political history over the 1000-1861 time period for around 8,000 municipalities. Evidence shows that higher intensity of exposure to republican, respectively monarchic, rule in the past is a main determinant of the vote. Alternative identification strategies and checks, including the use of local variation, IV and spatial RDD strategies, bolster a causal interpretation of the findings. Large effort is devoted to validation and mechanisms. Accounting for conditions in 1946 confirms the role of political history and documents that socio-economic conditions at the moment of the vote (inequality, education and sectoral employment), experience of nazi-fascist massacres, war violence, and exposure to radio propaganda also matter. For both validation and mechanism, we assemble a database on historical local statutes in pre industrial times. Within municipality panel variation show that political history in quarter-centuries leads to the emergence of charters granting freedom and self-governance. Finally, we look at large scale surveys, to study the impact on the support for democracy and trust in political institutions half a century after democratization.

  • Ideological Contagion and Populism: Evidence from Argentina [old version]  [New version coming soon]
    This paper studies the transmission of political ideologies between two countries. I study the diffusion of Populism in Argentina from 1946 through the lenses of the Italian mass migration wave (1880-1945). I hypothesize that populist aspects of Mussolini’s Fascist ideology spread to Argentina through migrants, contributing to the rise of Peronism. I focus on Italo-Argentine members of the Argentine parliament and reconstruct their Italian province of origin leveraging on the distribution of surnames and machine learning techniques. Exploiting the timing of migration, a plausibly exogenous measure of exposure to Fascism, and the occurrence of strong earthquakes as push factor for migration, I show that Italo-Argentine MPs with ancestors/relatives migrated during Mussolini’s rise have a higher probability to be affiliated to the Peronist party. Findings are robust to samples perturbations, placebo tests, and several specification checks. The relationship is stronger in more recent years (after 1983), while it is not significant during earlier Peronist presidencies (1946-1955). I show that during Perón’s first mandates the probability to be affiliated to the Peronist party is rather associated with having families migrated during Mussolini’s regime. I provide suggestive evidence that ideological transmission occurred through a combination of transmission along (most likely horizontal) family lines and Italian social networks.
 
Selected Work in Progress   
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  • Borders and Conflicts in Europe 1000-1800
    (with M. Cervellati, M. Onorato, and P. Vanin) [Draft coming soon]
    This paper provides a first attempt of systematic empirical investigation of the time-varying relationship between borders and conflicts in European history. We assemble a novel geo-referenced database with information on conflicts and borders in Europe from the year 1000 to 1800, with a panel structure at quarter of century frequency and 0.5x0.5 decimal degrees grid-cells as units of observation. Accounting for grid-cell and polity by time fixed effects, we show that, even before the emergence of the Westphalian state system, conflict was significantly more likely on and around contestable and salient borders (i.e., borders without mountains, crossed by roads, and close to urban centers). These results confirm predictions on the relevance of territoriality for conflict in pre-industrial Europe.

  • The Rise of the Knowledge Economy: Republic of Letters and Communication Infrastructures in Early Modern England
    (with M. Cervellati, G. Marciante, and P. Masella) 

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Old Working Papers
  • Lazzaroni, S. and A.S. Bedi (2014) 'Weather variability and food consumption: Evidence from Rural Uganda’, ISS Working Paper 585. The Hague, Netherlands: International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. [Download pdf]