Explaining labour productivity differentials across Italian regions: the role of socio-economic structure and factor endowments

This article aims at explaining substantial and persistent regional labour productivity differentials in Italy. First, the role played by the diversity of local economic structures is quantitatively assessed. Within-industry productivity levels are then related to regional endowments of physical and human capital per worker and to total factor productivity. Subsequently, an empirical evaluation of the influence exercised by a selected set of explanatory factors on regional total factor productivity (TFP) levels is performed. In this context, spatial econometrics techniques are employed to obtain inferences that are robust to the presence of spatial autocorrelation in the data. Copyright (c) 2006 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2006 RSAI.