Between export-led growth and administrative Keynesianism: Italy's two-tiered growth regime

Donato Di Carlo, Andrea Ciarini and Anna Villa

No 24/8, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: Comparative political economy scholarship struggles to categorize Italy's model of capitalism between a mixed-market economy and a hybrid, stagnant economic system. To enhance our understanding of the Italian political economy, this paper employs the analytical framework of growth regimes to study Italy's regional economic systems. Our analysis indicates that Italy can hardly be defined as a "national growth regime" due to the presence of two diametrically opposed regional growth regimes: northern regions conform to a manufacturing-based, export-led growth regime supported by competitiveness-enhancing territorial institutions; southern regions conform to a particular variety of the consumption-led growth regime, that is, an administrative Keynesianism regime, which we theorize to typify a regime where growth and employment are systematically dependent on the state's role as employer of last resort, the state's consumption-enhancing social policies, and economic forbearance of labor and corporate tax regulations. The paper suggests that studying regional growth regimes is desirable when marked internal diversity in economic outcomes or productive structures exists across regions within (generally larger) countries, and when subnational governments have powers to develop their own major institutions/policies in support of regional growth regimes.

Keywords: comparative economic systems; comparative political economy; growth models; Italy; regional economies; Italien; regionale Ökonomien; vergleichende politische Ökonomie; vergleichende Wirtschaftssysteme; Wachstumsmodelle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-pke
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