Italian regional evolutions

The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of Italy's territorial inequalities from 1952 to 1996 and to consider what the Italian record tells us about the utility of theories of convergence and divergence. After outlining the scale and nature of contemporary development gaps in Italy, the author explores the way these inequalities have changed, showing that convergence in the 1960s and early 1970s gave way to divergence, and identifying the respective roles of productivity, employment, and demographic growth in shaping the overall trend in inequality. To examine what underlay the aggregate trends attention is paid to the comparative evolution of twenty Italian regions, indicating clearly the changing relative fortunes of the metropolitan northwest, the Mezzogiorno, the Third Italy, and the Adriatic coastal regions. In the final sections several decompositions are employed to identify the contribution of productivity and employment growth across a range of sectors to the comparative performance of Italy's regional economies.