Roberto Galbiati (CNRS and Sciences Po)

“Earthquakes, Religion, and Institutional Change: Evidence from a Historical Experiment”

abstract

For a panel of 70 Episcopal see cities (governed by a bishop) over 300 years in the medieval northerncentral Italy, we document that occurrence of an earthquake retarded transition from feudal regime to commune. This evidence is consistent with the idea that shocks heightening people’s religiosity, by temporarily increasing the fixed cost of an uprising for those contesting the status quo regime, retard institutional change when the incumbent political leader is also the religious authority. This interpretation
is corroborated by the historical evidence and by a number of additional empirical findings. First, the negative effect of the earthquake is independent of the earthquake’s intensity. Second, it holds even if the earthquake did not result in any physical damage to people or buildings but was simply felt by the population. Third, the negative impact of earthquakes on transitions is not observed in the group of non-Episcopal cities, where the communal movement was also under way in the period considered.