From Global to Local: Trade Shocks and Regional Growth in Italy During the First Globalization

Matteo Gomellini, Anna Missiaia and Dario Pellegrino

No 17696, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Globalization can create winners and losers at the spatial level within national economies. This paper examines the economic impact of international trade on local economies in the case of late nineteenth-century Italy. We combine data on foreign trade at the national level with census data on manufacturing employment, and with our new estimates of agricultural employment by crop at the provincial level. Crossing this information, we compute two measures of trade exposure at the local level, namely import penetration and export ratio. We then perform a panel analysis to test whether changes in trade exposure explained provincial GDP growth. First, we detect that import penetration of agricultural products was associated with lower growth of Southern provinces. Second, we find that Northern provinces were more able to benefit from positive export dynamics in the manufacturing sector. The latter finding might stem from a higher degree of mechanization among Northern manufacturing firms. These results suggest that trade exposure could have been a factor contributing to widening the (already existent and growing) North-South gap.

JEL-codes: F14 N13 N73 N93 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17696 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: From Global to Local: Trade Shocks and Regional Growth in Italy During the First Globalization (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:17696

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17696

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().