Workplace Skills as Regional Capabilities: Relatedness, Complexity and Industrial Diversification of Regions

Duygu Buyukyazici, Leonardo Mazzoni, Massimo Riccaboni and Francesco Serti

No 2210, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: The literature reaches a unanimous agreement that industrial diversification is path-dependent because new industries build on preexisting capabilities of regions that are partly embodied and reflected in the skills of regions’ workforce. This paper explicitly accounts for regional capabilities as workforce skills to build skill relatedness and complexity measures, skill-spaces, for 107 Italian regions for the period 2013-2019. Data-driven techniques we use reveal that skill-spaces form two highly polarised clusters into social-cognitive and technical-physical skills. We show that industries have a higher (lower) probability of developing comparative advantage if their required skill set is (not) similar to those available in the region regardless of the skill type. We find evidence that similarity to technical-physical skills and higher complexity in social cognitive skills yields the highest probabilities of regional competitive advantage.

Keywords: Skill relatedness; Economic complexity; Industrial specialisation; Regional capabilities; Regional diversification. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O18 R10 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06, Revised 2022-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-lma, nep-tid and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg2210.pdf Version May 2022 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Workplace skills as regional capabilities: relatedness, complexity and industrial diversification of regions (2024)
Working Paper: Workplace Skills as Regional Capabilities: Relatedness, Complexity and Industrial Diversification of Regions (2022)
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