[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-134360-en":3,"doc-seo-134360-105":31,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":28,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":29,"read_time":30},134360,687207020761,"Oliver Hayes","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d",8,"Research & Report","Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia - Working Paper","The paper documents how the spread of the Sicilian Mafia in the late 19th century was shaped by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci under weak state conditions. It argues that the socialist threat encouraged landholders, estate managers, and local politicians to turn to the Mafia to resist peasant demands. Using rainfall variation around 1893, the study identifies the causal effect of Peasant Fasci on Mafia location in 1900. Evidence shows rainfall outside this window has no effect, and Mafia presence reduces literacy and public goods in later decades while strongly affecting political competition.","NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES  \nWEAK STATES: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE SICILIAN MAFIA  \nDaron Acemoglu  \nGiuseppe De Feo  \nGiacomo De Luca  \nWorking Paper 24115  \n[http://www.nber.org/papers/w24115](http://www.nber.org/papers/w24115)  \nNATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH  \n1050 Massachusetts Avenue  \nCambridge, MA 02138  \nDecember 2017  \nWe thank Alberto Alesina, Isaiah Andrews, Melissa Dell, Alfredo Del Monte, John Dickie, Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, Salvatore Lupo, Nicola Persico, Shanker Satyanath, and seminar and conference participants at the American Economic Association, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Association for the Study of Modern Italy, the Petralia Applied Economic Workshop, and the Universities of Napoli, Milano and Luxembourg for useful comments and suggestions. Stefano Presti, Luca Pennacchio and Sara Moccia provided assistance in data collection, while Mateo Montenegro provided exceptional research assistance for various parts of the project. Financial support from the Bradley Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Army Research Office, ARO MURI W911NF-12-1-0509, and the UK ESRC Transformative Social Science Research Award is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  \nNBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.  \n© 2017 by Daron Acemoglu, Giuseppe De Feo, and Giacomo De Luca. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.  \nWeak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia Daron Acemoglu, Giuseppe De Feo, and Giacomo De Luca NBER Working Paper No. 24115  \nDecember 2017  \nJEL No. H11,H75,K42,P16  \nABSTRACT  \nWe document that the spread of the Mafia in Sicily at the end of the 19th century was in part shaped by the rise of socialist Peasant Fasci organizations. In an environment with weak state presence, this socialist threat triggered landholders, estate managers and local politicians to turn to the Mafia to resist and combat peasant demands. We show that the location of the Peasant Fasci is significantly affected by an exceptionally severe drought in 1893, and using information on rainfall, we establish the causal effect of the Peasant Fasci on the location of the Mafia in 1900. We provide extensive evidence that rainfall before and after this critical period has no effect on the spread of the Mafia or various economic and political outcomes. In the second part of the paper, we use the source of variation in the location of the Mafia in 1900 to estimate its medium-term and long-term effects. We find significant and quantitatively large negative impacts of the Mafia on literacy and various public goods in the 1910s and 20s. We also show a sizable impact of the Mafia on political competition, which could be one of the channels via which it affected local economic outcomes. We document negative effects of the Mafia on longer-term outcomes (in the 1960s, 70s and 80s) as well, but these are in general weaker and often only marginally significant. One exception is its persistent and strong impact on political competition.  \nDaron Acemoglu  \nDepartment of Economics, E52-446 MIT  \n77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139 and CIFAR  \nand also NBER[daron@mit.edu](daron@mit.edu)  \nGiuseppe De Feo  \nStrathclyde Business School  \n199 Cathedral Street Glasgow G4 0QU, UK [giuseppe.defeo@strath.ac.uk](giuseppe.defeo@strath.ac.uk)  \nGiacomo De Luca University of York [giacomo.deluca@york.ac.uk](giacomo.deluca@york.ac.uk)  \n1 Introduction  \nThe criminal syndicate known as the Mafia has played a defining role in the Sicilian economy and politics over the last 150 years, and has ","cbCaih9CVuJuqBCo","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaih9CVuJuqBCo","pdf",746638,2,1,64,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Background and context\n## The Fasci and Mafia expansion\n## Research approach and identification strategy\n## Effects on development outcomes","[{\"question\":\"How did socialist Peasant Fasci influence the Mafia’s expansion in Sicily?\",\"answer\":\"In environments with weak state presence, the Peasant Fasci mobilization created pressure from peasant demands, leading landholders, estate managers, and local politicians to rely on the Mafia to resist and combat those demands.\"},{\"question\":\"What role does the drought in 1893 play in the paper’s analysis?\",\"answer\":\"The paper uses exceptionally severe drought conditions in 1893 to explain variation in where the Peasant Fasci were located, enabling a causal estimate of how Peasant Fasci affected Mafia location in 1900.\"},{\"question\":\"What are the long-term consequences of Mafia presence reported in the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The authors find negative impacts on literacy and various public goods in the 1910s and 1920s, weaker but often marginal effects on longer-term outcomes in the 1960s–1980s, and a persistent strong impact on political competition.\"}]","Weak States: Causes and Consequences of the Sicilian Mafia - 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