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There have been over one million deaths from the COVID-19 infection so far. The pandemic forced governments across the world into emergency lockdowns that pushed nearly all parts of the world economy into the deepest slump in production, investment, consumption, and employment since the 1930s. There is optimism that world economy will bounce back in 2021 in a V-shaped recovery. But that seems unlikely because global capitalism was in trouble before the pandemic hit and was already heading into a recession. The lockdown slump was just a tipping point. Also, the pandemic is not yet over and infections continue to mount. The impact of the pandemic lockdowns on employment and incomes, particularly for the poorest countries and the poorest in all countries has been devastating and will leave permanent scarring on economies and livelihoods. And there is no internationally coordinated plan to contain the pandemic and to restore livelihoods. Market-led economies and health systems have failed. Only a social economy where there is public ownership and community control of finance and industry can turn the world economy around for working people. Pandemic; Economy; Recession; Depression; Keynes; Stimulus.

Questa tesi utilizza metodologie differenti al fine di esplorare argomenti generalmente ascritti all'economia dello sviluppo. Il primo capitolo discute la letteratura sul capitale sociale scomponendolo nel suo componente strutturale, le reti, e cognitivo, la fiducia. Ogni componente è a sua volta scomposto in diverse sotto-dimensioni una delle quali, il particolarismo, è utilizzato nel secondo capitolo, sia a livello teorico che empirico, come determinante di forme di corruzione collusiva. Come previsto dalla teoria, il particolarismo ha un effetto positivo e causale sulla probabilità di offrire una tangente. Il terzo capitolo valuta l'impatto di un progetto di estensione agricola realizzato in Etiopia, volto ad introdurre la coltivazione di nuovi prodotti ortofrutticoli insieme ad alcune tecniche e strumenti innovativi. Empiricamente si utilizzano gli strumenti della valutazione d'impatto combinando confronti tra villaggi, attraverso una stima difference-in-differences, con una comparazione all'interno del villaggio usando uno studio controllato randomizzato. I risultati indicano che il progetto ha contribuito alla diversificazione produttiva ma non ha influenzato i ricavi ottenuti dalla vendita dei prodotti ortofrutticoli e, di conseguenza, il benessere delle famiglie. Il quarto capitolo mostra come meccanismi incentivati sufficientemente simili elicitino decisioni correlate in termini di avversione al rischio solo quando si tengono in considerazione altri atteggiamenti relativi al rischio. Inoltre si studia la correlazione tra l'avversione al rischio riportata e l'avversione al rischio ottenuta tramite lotterie. I risultati suggeriscono una misurata validità esterna dei due metodi studiati. ; This dissertation makes use of several methodologies to explore topics ascribed to the field of development economics. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on social capital by presenting a decomposition of trust and networks -- the cognitive and the structural component of social capital, respectively--, in several sub-dimensions. One of this dimension is used in chapter 2 where we investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the role played by the cultural norm of particularism, as opposed to universalism, for collusive bribery. Consistent with the theory, particularism is found to have a positive causal effect on the probability of offering a bribe. Chapter 3 assesses the impact of a small-scale agricultural extension project implemented in rural Ethiopia aimed at introducing the cultivation of horticultural gardens. Empirically, a mixed impact evaluation design is used combining across-villages comparisons, through difference-in-differences estimations, with a within village randomized control trial. The findings indicate that the project contributes to production diversification while it does not influence total revenues from sales, household welfare and diet. Chapter 4 shows that similar incentivized mechanisms elicit similar decisions in terms of monetary risk aversion only if other risk-related attitudes are accounted for. Furthermore, it examines whether individuals' characteristics and a self-assessed measure of risk aversion relate to individuals' choices in lotteries. The findings suggest that there is some external validity of the two studied tasks as predictors of self-reported risk attitudes.

The thesis is made of two chapters. The first one exploits an historical natural experiment set during Italy's Fascism to assess cultural persistence vs. dynamics in a paradigmatically critical area, Southern Italy, whose current economic backwardness is often associated to a low social capital endowment, in turn commonly ascribed to cultural and institutional heritage. In the experiment, an exogenous shift of a border into a territory entirely internal to that heritage provides us with an highlighting instrument able to identify weight of history and variation in culture in the 20th century in this doubly depressed region. A discontinuity exercise at the new border shows that, starting from previous homogeneity, there is evidence of relatively recent adverse cultural dynamics in Southern Italian territories. A comparison with an analogous exercise on the old, upper border tends to rule out classical institutional or contagion channels as individual and administrative behaviours used to be not better (mostly, worse) northwards. Their deterioration below the new border emerged endogenously in the period following the creation of Regions, contradicting previous legacy and giving rise to a relative reversal of cultural fortunes. The second chapter provides new evidence on the effectiveness of hiring subsidies that target the long-term unemployed, analysing a generous policy that was in force until the end of 2014 in Italy. Unlike others of its kind, this policy was particularly ambitious as it encouraged only permanent employment, which at the time still benefited from strong employment protection legislation. To achieve identification, we use a triple difference estimator, where we exploit three sources of variation: (i) the subsidy was only for the long-term unemployed and not for the short-term unemployed; (ii) it was significantly more generous in the South; (iii) it was in place until 2014. We find that the relative probability of eligible individuals in the southern regions of finding a permanent job dropped after the program terminated. This effect does not seem to be driven by substitutions over time, across contracts or among jobseekers. A cost-benefit analysis shows that the policy was globally in surplus.