Pavitt's Taxonomy and the Varying Impact of Socio-Environmental Context on Regional Labour Productivity in Italy

This paper proposes an alternative approach to measuring the impact of the “socio-environmental context” on the labour productivity of Italian manufacturing firms broken down by region. Two elements of originality characterize the paper. The first is the use of various indicators of “equitable and sustainable well-being” as proxies of socio-environmental factors. The second is the distinction of firms according to the Pavitt classification in order to measure interregional differences in the impact of socio-environmental factors on labour productivity. For the years 2012-2018, the results show that socio-territorial variables affect labour productivity, but with different effects depending on the Pavitt group. These findings may have useful practical implications for reducing socio-economic disparities between Italian regions