Spatial-Sectoral Skill Polarization: Is South of Italy Not Lost?

A new paradigm seems to emerge in the international division of labor in Europe and in the most advanced production systems all over the world: on the one hand, labor patterns in knowledge-intensive sectors show different trajectories compared with the observed performance of employment in other sectors. In this framework, employment in Italy shows a similar behavior, but at a slower pace of convergence to this new paradigm, at least with respect to its main competitors (Germany, France, Great Britain and, in perspective, Spain). Differences emerge among its regional macro-areas: Southern Italy is diverging from the rest of the overall Italian economy. This area, despite the dimension of the current gap with the rest of Italy, can traditionally count on a higher dynamism in the “creative destruction” process necessary to respond to external threats than of the Center and the North of Italy. This may give room for a cautious optimism about the possibilities of the South to resume an important role in the long-term growth of the country. In this paper, using constrained logistic functions, we try modeling diverse forms of labor substitution, comparing the dynamics of the structural gaps between Southern Italy and the rest of the country and providing an answer to the question: “Is the South of Italy definitively lost?”