Funding

FIS 2023:

Research Project Title: Institutional Resilience to Climate Change

Duration: 36 months

Amount: 2,350,000 Euro 

PI: Carmine Guerriero

Code: FIS-2023-03231

Abstract: Though the short-run effect of negative climate shocks has become evident, their long-run institutional impact is still poorly understood. To clarify this issue, this project constructs and analyses the first comprehensive data set on the institutions developed by the first states recorded in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley, identifying methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The key idea underlying this approach is that adverse – but not unbearable – droughts push elites to grant strong political and property rights to the non-elites assuring a large intrinsic return on cooperation. 

Moderate droughts have shaped major polities observed between 3050 and 1750 BCE via worse production conditions and subsequently via three key institutional responses. First, inclusive political institutions should have fostered public good provision via a strong state's fiscal capacity. Second, strong non-elites' property rights to land should have favored farming innovations via a secure land tenure. Finally, a forceful culture should have supported farming and long-distance trade investments via a large intrinsic return on cooperation. 

Instead of simplistically formulating policy-relevant assessments of this past experience, this project employs a theory-based empirical approach to understand the institutional responses to climate change of present-day developing countries and, then, extract policy ramifications. This extension will help turn the INRES project into an enduring program on the interplay among climate change, state-building, and societal resilience.

Funding Programme: The full page can be found here.

PRIN 2022:

Research Project Title: The Origins of the State: Evidence from Bronze Age Mesopotamia

Duration: 24 months

Amount: 257,638 Euro 

PIs: Carmine Guerriero, Barbara Luppi

Code: 2022SA485H 001

Abstract: Despite the vast evidence on the relevance of the state's institutional capacity to provide public goods, enforce contracts, and properly protect property rights, we still lack an organic and empirically sound framework to understand its origins and impact. To help fill this gap, we propose to construct and analyze data on the first stable state institutions recorded in Mesopotamia. 

Our testable predictions originate from the idea that adverse production conditions push elites lacking the ability to commit to future transfers to share their decision-making power with nonelites endowed with complementary skills to convince them that a sufficient part of the returns on joint investments will be shared via public good provision. 

This project will unmask the technological forces that can drive the endogenous formation of the fiscal order in those developing countries where institutional transplantation has failed. We will evaluate if reforms towards a more inclusive political process and/or a fall in preference heterogeneity. This research assesses if negative production shocks also determined – through the adoption of a more inclusive political process – the state's fiscal capacity, intended as the elites’ ability to elicit the nonelites’ cooperation via the provision of valuable public goods. This project will help evaluate the vast program of legal reforms that have interested in the last decades developing jurisdictions.

Funding Programme: The full page can be found here.

2015 Montalcini Program 

Research Project Title: Endogenous State Institutions

Duration: 36 months

Amount: 3,430,000 Euro 

PI: Carmine Guerriero

Abstract: Despite the vast evidence on the relevance of the state's institutional capacity to provide public goods, enforce contracts, and properly protect property rights, we still lack an organic and empirically sound framework to understand its origins and impact. To help fill this gap, we construct and analyze novel data sets on the first stable state institutions recorded in 90 European polities between 1000 and 1600 CE and 44 major Mesopotamian polities between 3050 and 1750 BCE. 

Our testable predictions originate from the idea that adverse production conditions push elites lacking the ability to commit to future transfers to grant strong political and property rights to the non-elites and the latter to favor these reforms by embracing cultural norms assuring a large intrinsic return on cooperation. While strong non-elites' rights convince them that a sufficient part of the returns on investing with the elites will be shared via public good provision, cultural accumulation increases the non-elites' investment payoff, allowing them to credibly commit to cooperation despite its limited return.

Funding Programme: The full page can be found here.

2017 AlmaIdea Program

Research project title: The Rise of Political Institutions: the Case of Ancient Societies

Duration: 24 months

Amount: 20,000 Euro

PIs: Giacomo Benati, Carmine Guerriero, and Federico Zaina

Abstract: Despite the vast evidence on the relevance of the state's institutional capacity to provide public goods, enforce contracts, and properly protect property rights, we still lack an organic and empirically sound framework to understand its origins and impact. To help fill this gap, we propose to construct and analyze, through an innovative mix of methodologies borrowed from archaeology, Assyriology, economics, history, law, and political science, a novel data set on the first stable state institutions recorded in 44 major Mesopotamian polities between 3050 and 1750 BCE. Our testable predictions originate from the idea that adverse production conditions push elites lacking the ability to commit to future transfers to share their decision-making power with nonelites endowed with complementary skills to convince them that a sufficient part of the returns on joint investments will be shared via public good provision. These reforms encourage cooperation.