Growing the Civic Mind: Civic Education, Civic Behavior, and Political Institutions
The DEMS Economics Seminar series is proud to host
Enrico Rubolino
(University of Lausanne and CREST)
ABSTRACT: Declining civic engagement increasingly strains welfare state institutions. This paper studies whether civic values can be shaped through early educational investments. I analyze Tax and School, a large-scale program implemented in Italian schools to promote fiscal and civic responsibility. Exploiting staggered cross-municipality adoption, I find that program participation increases students’ intrinsic motivation for rule compliance and reduces antisocial behaviors, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged contexts. These individual responses gradually translate into community-level outcomes: municipalities exposed to the program later exhibit higher voter turnout and stronger support for redistributive policies. Survey evidence indicates these effects operate through belief updating about the value of public goods and the role of government in mitigating inequality. Counterfactual simulations suggest that scaling the program would slow the secular decline in turnout, though long-term effects depend on whether low-civic areas can retain civic capital.
The seminar will be in presence, Room: 4057- Building U7