IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/rgscpp/v13y2021is1p73-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unraveling spatial patterns of COVID‐19 in Italy: Global forces and local economic drivers

Author

Listed:
  • Eleonora Cutrini
  • Luca Salvati

Abstract

This article investigates the spatial patterns of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) infection in Italy and its determinants from March 9 to June 15, 2020, a time interval covering the so‐called first wave of COVID pandemics in Europe. The results, based on negative binomial regressions and linear spatial models, confirm the importance of multiple factors that positively correlate with the number of recorded cases. Economic forces, including urban agglomeration, industrial districts, concentration of large companies (both before and after the beginning of the ‘lockdown’) and a north–south gradient, are the most significant predictors of the strength of COVID‐19 infection. These effects are statistically more robust in the spatial models than in the aspatial ones. We interpretate our results in the light of pitfalls related to data reliability, and we discuss policy implications and possible avenues for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Eleonora Cutrini & Luca Salvati, 2021. "Unraveling spatial patterns of COVID‐19 in Italy: Global forces and local economic drivers," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(S1), pages 73-108, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:rgscpp:v:13:y:2021:i:s1:p:73-108
    DOI: 10.1111/rsp3.12465
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rsp3.12465
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rsp3.12465?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Julie Le Gallo & Sandy Dall’erba, 2006. "Evaluating the Temporal and Spatial Heterogeneity of the European Convergence Process, 1980–1999," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(2), pages 269-288, May.
    2. Domenica Panzera & Paolo Postiglione, 2014. "Economic growth in Italian NUTS 3 provinces," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 53(1), pages 273-293, August.
    3. David Bailey & Jennifer Clark & Alessandra Colombelli & Carlo Corradini & Lisa De Propris & Ben Derudder & Ugo Fratesi & Michael Fritsch & John Harrison & Madeleine Hatfield & Tom Kemeny & Dieter F. K, 2020. "Regions in a time of pandemic," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(9), pages 1163-1174, September.
    4. Anselin, Luc & Bera, Anil K. & Florax, Raymond & Yoon, Mann J., 1996. "Simple diagnostic tests for spatial dependence," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 77-104, February.
    5. Enrico Bertuzzo & Lorenzo Mari & Damiano Pasetto & Stefano Miccoli & Renato Casagrandi & Marino Gatto & Andrea Rinaldo, 2020. "The geography of COVID-19 spread in Italy and implications for the relaxation of confinement measures," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-11, December.
    6. James P. LeSage, 2014. "What Regional Scientists Need to Know about Spatial Econometrics," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 44(1), pages 13-32, Spring.
    7. Roberto Antonietti & Paolo Falbo & Fulvio Fontini, 2020. "The relationship between air quality, wealth, and COVID-19 diffusion and mortality across countries," SEEDS Working Papers 0820, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised May 2020.
    8. Andrea Ciffolilli & Eleonora Cutrini & Marco Pompili, 2019. "Do European Funds support the formation of firms? New evidence from Italy," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 549-569, August.
    9. Nikos Kapitsinis, 2020. "The underlying factors of the COVID‐19 spatially uneven spread. Initial evidence from regions in nine EU countries," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(6), pages 1027-1045, December.
    10. Frank Crowley & Justin Doran, 2020. "COVID‐19, occupational social distancing and remote working potential: An occupation, sector and regional perspective," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(6), pages 1211-1234, December.
    11. Luc Anselin, 2010. "Thirty years of spatial econometrics," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(1), pages 3-25, March.
    12. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Massimo Colombo & Massimiliano Guerini & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2013. "University specialization and new firm creation across industries," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 837-863, December.
    13. Beniamino Murgante & Giuseppe Borruso & Ginevra Balletto & Paolo Castiglia & Marco Dettori, 2020. "Why Italy First? Health, Geographical and Planning Aspects of the COVID-19 Outbreak," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-44, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patrick Barrett & Jacques Poot, 2023. "Islands, remoteness and effective policy making: Aotearoa New Zealand during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 682-704, April.
    2. Federico Benassi & Maria Carella, 2023. "Modelling geographical variations in fertility and population density of Italian and foreign populations at the local scale: a spatial Durbin approach for Italy (2002–2018)," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 2147-2164, June.
    3. Mehmet Ronael & Tüzin Baycan, 2022. "Place-based factors affecting COVID-19 incidences in Turkey," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 1053-1086, October.
    4. Kostas Rontos & Enrico Maria Mosconi & Mattia Gianvincenzi & Simona Moretti & Luca Salvati, 2023. "Toward a Spatially Segregated Urban Growth? Austerity, Poverty, and the Demographic Decline of Metropolitan Greece," Data, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-20, March.
    5. Andree Ehlert & Jan Wedemeier, 2022. "Which factors influence mobility change during COVID‐19 in Germany? Evidence from German county data," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S1), pages 61-79, November.
    6. Tüzin Baycan & Suat Tuysuz, 2022. "Special Feature on social, economic, and spatial impacts of COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 1041-1051, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eleonora Cutrini, 2023. "Postcrisis recovery in the regions of Europe: Does institutional quality matter?," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 5-29, January.
    2. Diego Ravenda & Maika M. Valencia-Silva & Josep M. Argiles-Bosch & Josep García-Blandón, 2021. "The Effects of Immigration on Labour Tax Avoidance: An Empirical Spatial Analysis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 471-496, May.
    3. Juergen Deppner & Marcelo Cajias, 2024. "Accounting for Spatial Autocorrelation in Algorithm-Driven Hedonic Models: A Spatial Cross-Validation Approach," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 68(2), pages 235-273, February.
    4. Eveline Van Leeuwen & Sandy Dall'erba, 2000. "Does Agricultural Employment Benefit From EU Support?," Regional and Urban Modeling 283600099, EcoMod.
    5. Naimoli, Antonio, 2022. "Modelling the persistence of Covid-19 positivity rate in Italy," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 82(PA).
    6. Sandy Dall'erba & Julie Le Gallo, 2008. "Regional convergence and the impact of European structural funds over 1989–1999: A spatial econometric analysis," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 219-244, June.
    7. Emediegwu, Lotanna E. & Wossink, Ada & Hall, Alastair, 2022. "The impacts of climate change on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: A spatial panel data approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    8. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2022. "Inequalities in the times of a pandemic," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 37(109), pages 5-41.
    9. Valerien O. Pede & Raymond J. G. M. Florax & Henri L. F. de Groot & Gustavo Barboza, 2021. "Technological leadership and sectorial employment growth: A spatial econometric analysis for U.S. counties," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 50(1), February.
    10. J. Paul Elhorst & Katarina Zigova, 2011. "Evidence of Competition in Research Activity among Economic Department using Spatial Econometric Techniques," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2011-04, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    11. Andre Chagas & Carlos Azzoni & Alexandre Almeida, 2015. "A Spatial Difference-in-Difference Analysis to Measure the Sugarcane Producing Impact in Respiratory Health," ERSA conference papers ersa15p511, European Regional Science Association.
    12. Zhenhua Chen & Laurie A. Schintler, 2023. "Rediscovering regional science: Positioning the field's evolving location in science and society," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 617-642, June.
    13. Xu Wang & Hong Fang & Fang Zhang & Siran Fang, 2018. "The Spatial Analysis of Regional Innovation Performance and Industry-University-Research Institution Collaborative Innovation—An Empirical Study of Chinese Provincial Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, April.
    14. Alfredo Cartone & Paolo Postiglione, 2016. "Modelli spaziali di regressione quantilica per l?analisi della convergenza economica regionale," RIVISTA DI ECONOMIA E STATISTICA DEL TERRITORIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(3), pages 28-48.
    15. Julie Le Gallo & Sandy Dall'erba, 2008. "Spatial and sectoral productivity convergence between European regions, 1975–2000," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(4), pages 505-525, November.
    16. Tsusaka, Takuji W. & Kajisa, Kei & Pede, Valerien O. & Aoyagi, Keitaro, 2015. "Neighborhood effects and social behavior: The case of irrigated and rainfed farmers in Bohol, the Philippines," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 227-246.
    17. Bivand, Roger & Piras, Gianfranco, 2015. "Comparing Implementations of Estimation Methods for Spatial Econometrics," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 63(i18).
    18. repec:rri:wpaper:201301 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Sabina Buczkowska & Nicolas Coulombel & Matthieu de Lapparent, 2015. "Euclidean distance versus travel time in business location: A probabilistic mixture of hurdle-Poisson models," ERSA conference papers ersa15p1060, European Regional Science Association.
    20. Morton, Craig & Anable, Jillian & Yeboah, Godwin & Cottrill, Caitlin, 2018. "The spatial pattern of demand in the early market for electric vehicles: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 119-130.
    21. J. Paul Elhorst, 2014. "Matlab Software for Spatial Panels," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 37(3), pages 389-405, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:rgscpp:v:13:y:2021:i:s1:p:73-108. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1757-7802 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.