Why Should Regional Agricultural Productivity Growth Converge? Evidence from Italian Regions

The paper analyses agricultural TFP growth across Italian regions during the 1952-2002 period, and aims at identifying those factors that favour or hinder regional agricultural TFP growth convergence. Among them, idiosyncratic, R&D-spillover and learning components are included. Of major relevance is whether regions, despite their inescapable heterogeneity, tend to share common technological improvements, that is, to move along the same productivity growth rate TFP growth decomposition ultimately allows attributing observed productivity performance to convergence and divergence forces. Appropriate testing and estimation procedures are adopted to take into account panel unitroot issues and cross-sectional dependence.