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Building the Glass House: Transparency and Civic Capital across Italian municipalities

Author

Listed:
  • Giuseppe Albanese

    (Banca d'Italia, sede di Catanzaro)

  • Emma Galli

    (Università di Roma "La Sapienza")

  • Ilde Rizzo

    (Università di Catania)

  • Carla Scaglioni

    (Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria)

Abstract

Our paper explores one particular channel through which social capital affects political outcomes, that is transparency. Citizens who share social values are more inclined to get information via transparency and monitor public activity. Thus, we first investigate whether social capital affects the transparency of public action, using a new dimension of the quality of institutions that has not investigated so far; then, we verify if transparency affects the relationship between social capital and the accountability of politicians. We find that civic capital positively affects transparency, suggesting that the quality of the social environment provides an incentive for public agents to become more transparent and therefore more accountable. Our results are robust to different samples and endogeneity concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Giuseppe Albanese & Emma Galli & Ilde Rizzo & Carla Scaglioni, 2019. "Building the Glass House: Transparency and Civic Capital across Italian municipalities," Working papers 84, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    • Handle: RePEc:ipu:wpaper:84
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transparency; civic capital; political accountability; local governments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K2 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

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