Regional variety and employment growth in Italian labour market areas: services versus manufacturing industries

Francesca Mameli (), Simona Iammarino and Ron Boschma ()

No 1203, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of regional sectoral diversity on regional employment growth in Italy over the period 1991-2001. Assuming that externalities may be stronger between industries selling similar products or sharing the same skills and technology (i.e. related industries), we analyze the role of different forms of sectoral variety at the Local Labour System (LLS) level. Our results show strong evidence of a general beneficial effect of a diversified sectoral structure but suggest also the need to differentiate the analysis between manufacturing and services. In particular, overall local employment growth seems to be favoured by the presence of a higher variety of related service industries, while no role is played by related variety in manufacturing. When looking at diversity externalities between macro-aggregates, the service industry is affected by related variety in manufacturing, while no evidence of externalities is found from tertiary sectors to manufacturing.

Keywords: related variety; knowledge spillovers; agglomeration economies; regional growth; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 O18 O52 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2012-02, Revised 2012-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-lab, nep-sbm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg1203.pdf Version February 2012 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Regional variety and employment growth in Italian labour market areas: services versus manufacturing industries (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egu:wpaper:1203

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