Interregional Migration, Human Capital Externalities and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Italian Provinces

Roberto Basile (), Alessandro Girardi, Marianna Mantuano () and Giuseppe Russo
Additional contact information
Marianna Mantuano: ISTAT, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: The role of labour mobility on regional disparities is at the core of a heated debate: while standard competitive models posit that mobility works as an equilibrating device and reduces the unemployment, models featuring externalities lead to opposite conclusions. Against this backdrop, we present a simple two-region model adapted to the main features of the Italian North-South dualism that illustrates the effects of labour mobility with and without human capital externalities. We show that, when externalities are introduced, regional mobility may exacerbate regional unemployment disparities. Using longitudinal data over the years 2002- 2011 for 103 NUTS-3 Italian regions, we document that net outflows of human capital from the South to the North have increased the unemployment rate in the South and decreased the unemployment rate in the North. Our conclusions support the literature that finds an important role of regional externalities, and suggest that reducing human capital flight from Southern regions should be a priority.

Keywords: Unemployment; Migration; Human capital; Externalities; Italian regions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 J61 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-lab, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp460.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Interregional Migration, Human Capital Externalities and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Italian Provinces (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:460

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Maria Carannante ().