Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Emanuele Felice
Author-Workplace-Name: Autonomous University of Barcelona and University of Siena
Author-Email: emanuele.felice@gmail.com
Title: The determinants of Italy’s regional imbalances over the long run: exploring the contributions of human and social capital
Abstract: The article aims to present and discuss estimates of levels of human and social capital in Italy’s regions over the long term, i.e. roughly from the 
second half of the nineteenth century up to the present day. The results are linked to newly available evidence for regional value added in order to begin to 
form an explanatory hypothesis of long-term regional inequality in Italy. More particularly, convergence in value added per capita across Italy’s regions is 
tested (through both cross-section and dynamic panel regressions) in light of the neoclassical exogenous growth approach, which incorporates human capital and 
social capital as conditioning variables into a long-term production function. On the whole, the results confirm the importance of conditioning variables, i.e. 
of regional differences in human capital and social capital, but also suggest that their impact significantly changed over the twentieth century, thus supporting
the view that, in different periods, conditioning variables are determined by technological regimes. 
Classification-JEL: E13, E24, N93, N94, R11
Keywords: regional history, human capital, social capital, convergence
Length: 40 pages
Creation-Date: 2011-03-28
Number: _088
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/4970/felice88.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_088