Italian Regions Facing a New Crisis: Some Opening Remarks

digital

Article

Magazine

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI

Fascicle

RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI SCIENZE SOCIALI - 2021 - 2

Title

Italian Regions Facing a New Crisis: Some Opening Remarks

Authors

Mario A. Maggioni, Francesco Timpano

Publisher

Vita e Pensiero

Format

Article |

Pdf

Online from

06-2021

Doi

10.26350/000518_000064

Issn

0035-676X (print) | 1827-7918 (digital)

€ 6.00

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Description

The paper looks at regional economic structure and performance of Italian regions and reviews some recent contributions focussed on the Italian “Mezzogiorno” with a specific focus on the effect of the 2008 financial crisis and the recent Pandemics (Covid-19) crisis. A comparison between Italy and the rest of the EU indicates a structural difference between the underperforming Italian economy and the rest of the Union due to the specific structure of the Italian economy in terms of sector and firm size and the consequences on strategic and organizational issues of weak small businesses and inefficient medium and large enterprises. Moreover, the subordinate positioning of Italian firms in global value chains has been also identified as one of the reasons behind their poor performance in terms of productivity. Since “space matters”, when designing policies, decision makers should consider the role that agglomeration process and the improvement of quality of supra-regional infrastructures may play in the development of more advances regions, while allowing some trickling-down towards low-performing regions.

keywords

Regional Development, Economic policies, Economic structure.

Authors biography

Mario A. Maggioni, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Email: mario.maggioni@unicatt.it.
Francesco Timpano, Dipartimento di Scienze economiche e sociali, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Email: francesco.timpano@unicatt.it.