Two of three topics to pick. At least two articles should be discussed for each.
* Articles marked with an asterisk were presented in seminar.

Topic 1. Transacting in a world of uncertainty, distrust, and natural resources - Sicily

Gambetta, Diego. The Sicilian Mafia. The Business of Private Protection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993. Chs. 0 (Introduction; 1-11), 1 (The Market; 15-33), 4 (The Origins; 75-99).

Gambetta argues that the Mafia sells trust. The chapters in the cited book are short and easy to read; you might consider reading a couple of others that strike your fancy. As an alternative you could consider chapters in the following edited volume.

Gambetta, Diego, ed. Trust. Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Chs. 8 (The Destruction of Trust and its Consequences in Eighteenth-Century Naples; A. Pagden; 127-41), 10 (Mafia: the Price of Distrust; D. Gambetta; 158-75) and 13 (Can We Trust Trust?; D. Gambetta; 213-237).

Bandiera, Oriana, "Land Reform, the Market for Protection, and the Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, vol. 19 no. 1 (2003), pp. 218-44.

Bandiera, Oriana, "Contract Duration and Investment Incentives: Evidence from Land Tenancy Agreements," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 5 no. 5 (Sept. 2007), pp. 953-86.

Dimico, Arcangelo, Alessia Isopi, and Ola Olsson, "Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: The Market for Lemons," Journal of Economic History, vol. 77, no. 4 (Dec. 2017), pp. 1083-1115.

Buonanno, Paolo, Ruben Durante, Giovanni Prarolo and Paolo Vanin, "Poor Institutions, Rich Mines: Resource Curse in the Origins of the Sicilian Mafia," Economic Journal, vol. 125 (Aug. 2015), pp. 175-202.

Topic 2: Institutions at the local level

Suggested by a student:Akcomak, I. Semih, Dinand Webbink, and Bas ter Weel, "Why Did the Netherlands Develop So Early? The Legacy of the Brethren of the Common Life," Economic Journal, vol. 126 (June 2016), pp. 821-60.

Becker, Sascha, and Ludger Woessmann, "Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 124 no. 2 (2009), pp. 531-96.

* Becker, Sascha, Lukas Mergele, and Ludger Woessmann, "The Separation and Reunification of Germany: Rethinking a Natural Experiment Interpretation of the Enduring Effects of Communism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 34, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 143-71. (Also available in working paper versions.)

* Cantoni, Davide, "The Economic Effects of the Protestant Reformation: Testing the Weber Hypothesis in the German Lands," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 13 no. 4 (2015), pp. 561-98.

* Guiso, Luigi, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, "Long-term Persistence," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 14 no. 6 (Dec. 2016), pp. 1253-468. Various earlier versions of this paper circulated over several years.

Kersting, Felix, Iris Wohnsiedler, and Nikolaus Wolf, "Weber Revisited: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Nationalism," Journal of Economic History, vol. 80, no. 3 (Sept. 2020), pp. 710-45.

Tabellini, Guido, "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 8 no. 4 (2010), pp. 677-716.

Topic 3. Craft guilds: efficient or evil?

Epstein, S. R., "Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe," Journal of Economic History, vol. 58 no. 3 (Sept. 1998), pp. 684-713.

Epstein, S. R., "Craft guilds in the pre-modern economy: a discussion," Economic History Review, vol. 61 no. 1 (2008), pp. 155-74.

Ogilvie, Sheilagh, "Rehabilitating the guilds: a reply," Economic History Review, vol. 61 no. 1 (2008), pp. 175-82.