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In line with internationally defined goals of sustainable development, European agricultural policies today have a far-sighted vision for rural areas. Using a case study approach, this paper explores how receptive rural farms in Sicily are to a long-term vision of development. The study focuses on three key factors of a long-term vision, that is, digitalisation, innovation and sustainability, to examine not only whether farms have invested in these areas but also how they perceive their role in the post-pandemic era. Empirical results provide insights into the concentration of farms in the central inland areas of Sicily without any real long-term vision of development. Nevertheless, the analysis also shows that some of them do have a positive attitude to change.

The brain drain from the south of Italy is a well-known and unfortunately increasingly alarming phenomenon. In recent times, the demographic decline due to migration has been coupled by a worrying decrease in the average age at which this process starts. While most of the existing literature has looked at the problem looking at migrant workers, especially in relation to their level of schooling or education, here we look at the propensity to migrate at an earlier stage of life while people are still in their secondary school studies. Using a unique field survey conducted over a large sample of students in the city of Palermo we uncover that more than three quarters of the interviewed sample would consider moving far away from the family after completing their studies. We perform a simple descriptive analysis to look at how this propensity to migrate changes depending on some individual and family characteristics of the respondents.

This article contributes to the literature on firm demography and regional development in at least three different ways. First, consumption, rather than employment, which is the most common variable seen in literature, is used to measure the impact of firm demography on regional development. Second, while the literature is mainly focused on the relationship between new business formation and regional development, we investigate both entry and exit flows of firms. Third, we decompose each of these flows into spatial and sectoral components. The empirical investigation looks at the Italian regions with reference to the period 2004–2009. Results seem to be substantially divergent between the South and the rest of Italy.

Questo contributo analizza la relazione tra cambiamento della popolazione e formazione di nuove imprese con particolare attenzione al ruolo dello spazio. Viene infatti, da un lato, analizzata l'influenza della concentrazione spaziale della popolazione rispetto la relazione di interesse, dall'altro, viene utilizzata una specificazione econometrica che tenga conto della correlazione spaziale presente nei dati. Lo studio condotto sulle province italiane per il periodo 2004/2007, mette in luce alcuni aspetti degni di nota. Tra questi, è di particolare interesse l'evidenza che nelle province con maggiore ritorno, in termini di natalità delle imprese, da un incremento della popolazione sono quelle con livelli medi di densità urbana

This paper investigates the role of urbanization in the relation between population change and new business formation. The hypothesis of research is that population change significantly influences new business formation only in regions at lower urbanization. This hypothesis is based on the idea that local demand and growing population are significant determinants of new business formation only for rural regions. Using Italian data, we find evidence in support of this hypothesis. Moreover, we find that evidence of spatial dependence in the relation between population change, new business formation and urbanization.

This paper investigates sources of product or process innovation, such as investments in research and development, machinery, personnel training and management systems, by examining microdata from eight European countries. We pay particular attention to the effect of research and development in favouring the absorption of new technologies, i.e. the absorptive capacity. Significant positive effects of each source on both product and process innovations are found. Significant evidence of positive absorptive capacity emerges only in firms with low predicted probabilities of introducing innovation.

Utilizzando una recente versione della shift-share con struttura spaziale, in questo contributo scomponiamo il cambiamento della dimensione media delle imprese nelle province italiane rispetto a componenti di natura sia spaziale (di regione e di vicinato) che settoriale. L?analisi, condotta con riferimento al periodo 2004-2009, mette in risalto differenze di rilievo rispetto la classe dimensionale considerata. In particolare, si registra una netta demarcazione Nord-Sud nella distribuzione provinciale degli effetti spaziali e settoriali se consideriamo le micro imprese (1-10 addetti), mentre la geografia appare molto più complessa per le piccole imprese (11-50 addetti)

L’articolo analizza le caratteristiche dell’attività innovativa delle regioni italiane, osservando non solo i fattori direttamente collegati alla tecnologia ed alla conoscenza codificata ma anche i fattori relativi alla conoscnza non codificata che generalmente si sviluppa nei sitemi produttivi locali più virtuosi. A questo fine, sono stati ottenuti due indicaotri sintetici che forniscono una misura quantitativa degli ambienti innovativi ed imprenditoriali per ogni singola regione. Raggruppando le regioni in cluster omogenei rispetto gli indicatori sintetici, sono stati così individuati da quattro ad otto differenti profili territoriali di innovazione. Infine, i diversi cluster innovativi sono stati posti a confronto in relazione alla loro performance economica.

The paper first employs the Growth Accounting methodology in order to calculate the annual levels of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in Italian regions for the period 1970-2001. The main result of this initial analysis is that the well-known gap in labour productivity among Italian regions depends mostly on the differences in TFP. The paper then investigates on the presence (or absence) of regional convergence in TFP over the period considered. To this end, physical and social infrastructures are taken into account as factors that influence the process of convergence. Finally, the paper finds a significant effect of both types of infrastructure on regional convergence in TFP, which is estimated to occur over the whole time period at the rate of 11%.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Italian Government has attempted to implement a new generation of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. It is claimed that compared to the past, these policies should be more far reaching since they emphasize the importance of the structural economic conditions in promoting growth and convergence. In this paper, we use a dataset of regional social and economic indicators in order to look at the evidence surrounding the outcome of these policies. A frontier approach seems to be suitable for the purpose of this research, as it yields a ranking of performance scores where regions can be compared in cross-sectional and a temporal dimension. Additionally to the traditional measures of economic development such as GDP per capita, we also run the analysis on competitiveness and entrepreneurship measures. Early results seem to provide interesting evidence with respect to the regional features of the development policies.

This paper performs a number of tests to estimate convergence in total factor productivity (TFP) among Italian regions during the period 1970-2001. We generate the regional TFP series using growth accounting methodologies, and then apply a range of panel unit root tests to analyse the process of convergence. We extend the existing literature by incorporating three main improvements. Firstly, we control for the heterogeneity arising from the different economic structure of each region. Secondly, we account for the cross-sectional dependence due to common shocks or spillovers among different regions at the same time. Finally, we look for clubs of convergence using tests of poolability both on economic and statistical grounds.