The webinar, chaired by Michelangelo Vasta (USiena), included the presentation of two new research papers. The workshop was attended by more than 25 participants of different universities and institutions that animated a stimulating discussion after presentation and providing interesting insights on the topic.

Topics:
productivity Italian regional divide Cassa per il Mezzogiorno

In the first session, Tancredi Salamone (SSSA) presented a joint paper with Alessandro Nuvolari (SSSA) on the manufacturing productivity gap between UK and Italy in the 1930s. The paper provides new measures of labor productivity for both countries, adopting two different estimation approaches. As highlighted by the authors, the accurate dimension of the Italian industrial performance before World War II is not trivial in the perspective of the overall assessment of Fascism and its long-term effects, and, in particular, in the role it had in doing the groundwork for the economic development during the golden age. Moreover, the knowledge of the Italian manufacturing productivity has not so far been deeply investigated for the Italian case, particularly in comparative terms. Considering more than 30 manufacturing sectors, the paper shows that the ‘quantity approach’ estimates the Italian manufacturing productivity as almost 40% of the British one in the 1930s. The ‘double deflation approach’, instead, including in the computation a wider number of products, estimates the Italian industrial performance as more than 60%. The work highlights how productivity estimates are sensitive to the adopted method and that the advantages and pitfalls of each procedure should be taken into account also according to the included branches in the estimation.

In the second session, Tancredi Buscemi (UPerugia) presented his contribution on the North-South Italian divide in economic performance in the 1970s. The paper analyzes the causes that suddenly affected the performing activity of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (CASMEZ) in the social and economic convergence of Southern Italy at the end of the golden age. The work contributes to the ample debate on the central role of institutions as the main mechanism in the Italian regional divergence. According to the author, the top-down strategy of reforming CASMEZ at the regional level was the main cause that interrupted economic growth in the South. This conjecture is empirically substantiated using the synthetic control method at the NUTS2 level. Results show that the decentralization of the governance was the trigger of the Italian regional divide. The creation of regions in 1970 and the governmental reform in 1971, that led to the ‘regionalization’ of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, abruptly slowed GDP growth in southern regions by approximately 4%.