The relationship between green and digital skill supply and industrial dynamics

We contribute to the literature on the green, digital and twin transitions by providing novel evidence on their implications for industrial dynamics. In particular, we investigate whether the local supply of skills in the green, digital and twin domains is related to firm entry and exit at the NUTS3 level in Italy. We exploit a recently created dataset on the near-universe of Italian university programme descriptions to capture the skills provided through higher education. We find that the supply of green, digital and twin skills enhances opportunities for firm entry. We rule out the possibility that this effect simply reflects the supply of high-skilled labour in general. The supply of green skills may induce higher industrial renewal, being it also correlated with higher exit rates.