Research

Working Papers

“Institutional Commitment and Economic Revival: Evidence from Palace-Building in Renaissance Rome”

Abstract

I study the recovery of the Roman economy following the papacy’s sojourn in France (1309-1377). I show that a reform of inheritance laws in 1480 gave rise to an era of palace-building resulting in the construction of over 35% of palaces built in Roman history. Using a novel dataset that links information on investment projects and patrons, I provide evidence that the reform, which allowed prelates to bequeath their possessions, caused a significant increase of prelate palace-building relative to their lay counterparts (who were not directly affected by the reform). Initial prelate investment then guaranteed that the papacy would remain in Rome long-term, which eventually incentivized laymen to invest – though the return of the papacy to Rome itself had failed to induce investment. Increased confidence in Rome's future also manifested in more ambitious projects, across all patrons. I disentangle the effect of commitment to long-term presence from the effects of contemporaneous papal presence in Rome to show that the irreversibility of institutional change is a necessary condition for successful intervention.

This paper has been the recipient of the Georges Gallais-Hamonno Prize in Historical Finance, the Frank D. Lewis Memorial Prize, and the Arthur Hosios Award.

Work in Progress

“The Evolving Credibility of Stories”

“Biases in Prospective Learning” with Yves Le Yaouanq

Pre-PhD Publications

“Restricted Invertibility of Continuous Matrix Functions,” with Adrian Fan, Jack Montemurro, Pavlos Motakis, Naina Praveen, Paul Skoufranis and Noam Tobin. Operators and Matrices, 2022, 16(4): 1191-1217.