Do strong states affect the culture and actions of their citizens in a persistent way? And if so, can the capacity to tax, by itself, have a role in driving this effect? I study how the historical capacity of a state to collect taxes affects the decision of citizens to evade the mandatory military draft. I focus on Italy during World War I and identify quasi-exogenous variation in tax collection induced by the administrative structure of Piedmont during the 1814-1870 period. Using newly collected and digitised individual data on nearly all the men of the 1899 cohort drafted in the province of Turin, I find that citizens born in towns with lower historical fiscal capacity are more likely to evade the military draft, and that the effect transmits through changes in culture. Results are consistent with fiscal capacity spurring norms of rule-following able to persist in the long run. Placebo estimates from other Italian territories confirm that the effect I estimate can be attributed to historical fiscal capacity, and it is not confounded by legal capacity. (New draft coming soon!)

We study whether work practices adopted in recent history in agriculture influence the political empowerment of women in a European country. Focusing on Italy, we study the case of female rice weeders and their successful history of unionization and mobilization for better working conditions. Relying on an instrumental variable strategy to predict quasi-exogenous variation in rice production, we test whether the historical presence of female rice weeders predicts differences in measures of political empowerment during the second half of the XX century. We find that towns where rice production was historically relevant had higher support for divorce in the 1974 referendum, have more women in politics, and are more likely to have a nursery school. Our results suggest the importance of collective action of working women to achieve persistent female political empowerment. (Draft available upon request)