Vania Licio

The road system built during the Roman Empire continues to have a significant impact on modern infrastructure in Italy. This paper examines the historical influence of Roman roads on the development of Italy's motorways and railways. The empirical analysis demonstrates how modern Italian transport infrastructure largely follows the path of the consular trajectories established by the network of Roman roads. These ancient roads, being paved and connecting the extremes of the Italian peninsula, have endured over time, serving as the foundational physical capital for the development of the current transport network. Overall, this research highlights the enduring legacy of the Roman road system and the robustness of Roman roads as an instrument in determining the causal effect of modern infrastructure.

This paper estimates a measure of coal price for all NUTS3 Italian provinces between 1861 and 1911. Italy was a latecomer country and its late industrialization was characterized by the absence of coal in a time when the steam engine powered factory work. The new variable accounts for the main input factor of manufacturing production during that period in which the Italian economy registered a long-term growth of GDP and an increase in its industrial activity. The measure allows to speculate on the importance of coal for Italian industrialization and on the origins of the North–South divide.

The paper provides evidence of the causal effect of infrastructure on trade costs, for the 107 Italian provinces (NUTS3), testing whether current differences in trade costs among provinces can be traced back to the structure of the historical Roman road network. By constructing a specific measure of the extent of the Roman road network for each Italian province and relying on an instrumental variables approach, the empirical analysis shows that having an integrated road system, as the one built during the Roman Empire, plays an important role in current international trade. The study confirms not only the importance of history for contemporary economic development, but also the significant role played by the historical infrastructure in shaping geography and in determining current trade patterns via the influence on today's infrastructure.