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

Basile Roberto, Mantuano Marianna, Girardi Alessandro and Giuseppe Russo
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Basile Roberto: University of L’Aquila,L'Aquila, Italy
Mantuano Marianna: Italian National Institute of Statistics,Rome, Italy
Girardi Alessandro: Parliamentary Budget Office,Canberra, Australia

German Economic Review, 2019, vol. 20, issue 4, e385-e414

Abstract: Since the mid-1990s interregional migration flows in Italy have dramatically increased, especially from the South to the North. These flows are characterized by a strong component of human capital, involving a large number of workers with secondary and tertiary education. Using longitudinal data for the period 2002-2011 at NUTS-3 territorial level, we document that long-distance (i.e., South-North) net migration of high-skill workers has increased the unemployment at origin and decreased it at destination, thus deepening North-South unemployment disparities. On the other hand, long-distance net migration of low-skill workers has had the opposite effect, by lowering the unemployment at origin and raising it at destination. Further evidence also suggests that the diverging effect of high-skill migration dominates the converging effect of lowskill migration. Thus, concerns for an ‘internal brain drain’ from Southern regions look not groundless.

Keywords: Unemployment; Migration; Human capital; Externalities; Italian regions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1111/geer.12172

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