Combining evolutionary economic geography and the recombinant knowledge approach, we test whether the level of entropy in available capabilities affects the level of a region’s economic complexity. ...Merging different data sources on 103 Italian NUTS-3 regions and 9 years (between 2008 and 2016), our panel regressions show that a higher level of economic complexity in a region is explained by a higher average level of entropy in the region’s capabilities. We also find this effect stronger in the northern and central regions of Italy, and it is due only to entropy in the available technologies, not in capital or skills. Using structural equation models, we show that variety of skills and relative capital endowment are indirectly linked to the level of economic complexity in Italian regions, since they first stimulate a greater technological diversification.
Several studies have detected a positive relationship between the spatial dynamics of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and their social and economic outcomes. In this article, we draw upon the ...Economic Complexity Index (ECI) as a proxy to capture the social interactive nature that characterises CCIs and the way this affects firm performance. Our assumption is that more complex locations, endowed with different types of more sophisticated production capabilities, allow CCI firms to perform more strongly. This can depend on the higher opportunities of complex knowledge sharing and cross-fertilisation processes among different types of CCI firms or with non-CCI firms. The focus is on Italy, a country with a long-standing historical tradition in culture and creativity. We draw upon an original panel database at firm and province level (for the period 2010–2016) to compute two different ECIs, one for the CCIs and another one for the rest of the economy. Moreover, we analyse the effects these two types of complexity on the performance of firms within sectors with different levels of cultural and commercial value. We find that economic complexity of CCIs but not economic complexity of the rest of the economy matters for CCI firm performance. However, the effect is relatively weak. The same finding applies to all CCI firms, irrespective of their type of sector. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.
The increasing number of young people who do not study and do not work has become a relevant and timely socioeconomic issue. The role of the economic family background and the social context mitigate ...the risk of being not in education, employment or training (NEET). However, other factors such as evident regional disparities, suggest the need to investigate alternative remedies, in particular for the Italian context. Among these, we focus on cultural capital (CC) as a driver to discourage school dropout and a stimulus for pro-active behaviours in work participation. We test the role of CC (proxied by the accumulation of cultural experiences) on the rate of NEETs population in Centre-North and South Italy. We apply a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) approach to 2001–2018 regional NUTS2 data. Our findings highlight the positive effect of CC on NEET, and the impact is higher for southern regions. This result might represent a key of convergence between the two Italian geographical areas and pave the way for ad hoc policy measures to reduce the risk of becoming NEET.
This paper evaluates the effects of inter‐firm networks (IFNs) on firms’ economic performance. This policy instrument has been implemented in Italy from 2009 to support mostly small and medium‐size ...enterprises after the great economic crisis of 2007–2009. Starting from an original database of Italian manufacturing and service firms for the period 2010–2017, the paper develops in two steps: the first part, with “difference‐in‐differences” technique, is highlighted the positive effect on firms’ performance for those firms involved in an IFN. The second part investigates which characteristics of the IFN have better impacts on firm’s performance in the medium long‐run. This study contributes to the network policy literature by revealing another instrument to foster cooperation and increase firms’ innovation and internationalisation, without the need to be geographically bounded.
The aim of the work is to understand how the role of local externalities (agglomeration economies and related variety), as well as firm heterogeneity, have influenced the internationalisation ...strategies chosen by Italian manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2006. Based on the 10th survey of the corporate bank Unicredit‐Capitalia, I construct an unbalanced panel data of 19,635 firms. As in Cainelli, Ganau and Iacobucci, I compute related variety as a measure of the input‐output relationships between firms of different sectors: this procedure allows taking into account the vertical related variety as a proxy for diversification. The results of the econometric analysis, conducted with multinomial logistic regressions, show that vertically related variety and productivity positively influence both export and FDI strategies. The extant literature on firm heterogeneity has been confirmed, while important findings on local externalities enrich the already existing theories.
This paper examines the uneven geography of COVID‐19‐related excess mortality during the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, before assessing the factors behind the geographical differences in ...impact. The analysis of 206 regions across 23 European countries reveals a distinct COVID‐19 geography. Excess deaths were concentrated in a limited number of regions—expected deaths exceeded 20% in just 16 regions—with more than 40% of the regions considered experiencing no excess mortality during the first 6 months of 2020. Highly connected regions, in colder and dryer climates, with high air pollution levels, and relatively poorly endowed health systems witnessed the highest incidence of excess mortality. Institutional factors also played an important role. The first wave hit regions with a combination of weak and declining formal institutional quality and fragile informal institutions hardest. Low and declining national government effectiveness, together with a limited capacity to reach out across societal divides, and a frequent tendency to meet with friends and family were powerful drivers of regional excess mortality.
We investigate whether regions' participation to the global network of embodied R&D (GNRD) facilitates their technological diversification. Filling a gap about the role of global research and ...development (R&D) networks, we maintain that by patenting in pivotal GNRD industries, regions become more exposed to global knowledge and increase their capacity to diversify also in technologies less cognitively related to pre-existing ones. Using novel GNRD data, we test this using a panel (2004-19) of NUTS-2 regions for the EU-13. GNRD regional exposure positively correlates with technological diversification, mainly at the intensive margin. A higher exposure makes technological diversification less related to existing technologies, though the relationship is non-linear.
COVID-19 is mostly considered to have ravaged places with high levels of inequality and poverty. Yet, in the case of Europe, the evidence for this is limited. In this paper we address this gap in our ...knowledge by exploring how regional variations in poverty, wealth and interpersonal inequality have shaped COVID-19-related excess mortality. The results show that during the first 18 months of the pandemic there is no link between inequality and poverty, on the one hand, and the lethality of the disease, on the other. The geographical concentration of wealthy people is related to more, not less, excess mortality.
Solitude is a rising phenomenon in the western world. The share of people affected by solitude has been rising for some time and the Covid-19 pandemic has further brought this trend to the fore. Yet, ...we know next to nothing about the aggregate subnational economic impact of the rise in solitude. In this paper, we analyse the consequences of solitude on regional economic performance across Europe, distinguishing between two of its key dimensions: alone living, proxied by the regional share of single-person households and loneliness, proxied by the aggregate share of social interactions. We find that solitude has important implications for economic development, but that these go in different directions. While alone living is a substantial driver of economic growth across European regions, high shares of lonely people undermine it. The connection of loneliness with economic growth is, however, dependent on the frequency of in-person meetings, with large shares of the population meeting others socially on a weekly basis, alongside a small percentage of people who never meet others, yielding the best economic returns.
Sustainable practices should include proper incentives and involve a large part of the population to achieve a significant environmental impact. Human capital is considered one of the factors that ...affect pro-environmental behaviours: more educated people tend to be more aware of waste management processes. Another factor is social capital, as far as the feeling of belonging to a society might involve people in adopting sustainable practices. However, these two concepts are strictly related and deserve to be studied as complementary to each other. Thus, this article investigates whether social capital might support waste recycling when interacting with the accumulation of human capital at a provincial level. Our analysis relies on a unique dataset of 103 Italian provinces for the period 2004–2017. Results suggest that while human and social capital has a negative effect on waste separation, their interaction turns out to be positive and even stronger when we consider Southern provinces with respect to the whole country. This finding might be of interest not only from an academic viewpoint, but also from a policymaker’s perspective to alleviate the pledge of waste separation, which has affected the South of Italy in recent decades.
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