Quite a Visible Hand? State Funding and Primary Education in 19th-century France and Italy

This paper explores regional convergence in schooling in France and Italy under decentralized primary education, that is, in the long 19th century. A new, preliminary harmonized dataset on schooling is presented, including figures on Primary Gross Enrolment Ratios, aggregate municipal expenditure per school-age child and state subsidies across French departements and Italian province. The analysis shows that regional convergence in schooling happened well before the shift to the formal centralization of school management in the two countries. However, the pace of regional convergence accelerated during this transition, and the extent of state investments and subsidies mattered to regional convergence. Although more research is needed to include demand-related factors of schooling in this framework, the results suggest that institutions and public policy were quite "visible hands", which played an important role in fostering education across the regions of Southwestern Europe beyond the mere response to market and demand-side features.