The empirics of regional Economic growth in italy. 1951-1993

In this paper, on the basis of an original data base, we have gathered detailed information on the Italian regional growth over the post-war period using several statistical techniques. We have described the evolution of the disparities using, as a measure of regional economic growth, either per capita income and labour productivity, the latter variable also at the sectoral level. The evidence indicates that labour productivity convergence across the Italian regions was limited to the period 1960-75. This process has been mainly driven by a fall in the industrial dispersion and by a reduction in the share of agriculture. In the past 18 years the convergence process has completely stopped, indeed we have detected a slight increase in the dispersion, arising essentially from the industrial sector and from the southern non-Adriatic regions. Also per capita income inequality has decreased over the period 1960-75, but mainly among the north-centre regions and it has started to increase again from the mid-1970s. Now the degree of regional wealth inequality in Italy is still the highest within the EU. Per capita income tends to spread according to a two-peaks distribution with all the southern regions but one included in the low polarisation point.