The Roots of Business Familism in Southern Italy. A Quantitative Analysis of the 19th Century

This paper investigates the historical roots of business familism in Southern Italy. Using a social network analysis and employing surnames as proxies for family ties, we introduce and explore various measures of business familism. Our analysis reveals that the persistent embeddedness of firms in family ties was a structural feature of the business system in the South throughout the 19th century. The analysis also documents significant variations in the trends of business familism across different economic sectors.