Demographic Change and Entrepreneurship Across Regions: Long-Run Evidence from Italy

Federico Barbiellini Amidei, Matteo Gomellini, Lorenzo Incoronato () and Paolo Piselli ()
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Federico Barbiellini Amidei: Bank of Italy
Matteo Gomellini: Bank of Italy
Lorenzo Incoronato: CSEF, University of Naples Federico II, CESifo, CReAM and Rockwool Foundation Berlin, https://www.csef.it/lorenzo-incoronato/
Paolo Piselli: Bank of Italy

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: This paper studies the relationship between demographic change and entrepreneurship and highlights its spatial dimension. We digitize historical censuses to reconstruct entrepreneurship rates and the age structure of Italian provinces since1960. We develop an estimation framework that relates entrepreneurship to granular age cohorts of the local population, leveraging instrumental variables to address endogeneity issues. Our results uncover stark regional heterogeneity. In Northern Italy, we find a hump-shaped age-entrepreneurship profile peaking at cohorts aged 30-40. In the South, entrepreneurship increases with age. Regional differences in the local business environment partly account for different estimated profiles.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; demographic change; regional differences; long run (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 L26 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-eec and nep-sbm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:752

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