Output, investment and productivity: the Italian North–South regional divide from a Kaldor–Verdoorn approach

This paper elaborates on the Italian North–South divide by endorsing a Kaldor–Verdoorn perspective. To assess the endogenous relationship between labour productivity, capital accumulation and output growth, panel structural vector autoregressive (P-SVAR) modelling is applied to 1980–2017 data on Italian macro-regions and areas. Findings show that territorial disparities exist in both the Verdoorn and the capital accumulation effects throughout the country. Output growth has a larger effect on productivity in the Centre–North, while the investment effect is stronger in the South. That stresses the relevance of public effort in stimulating both output and investment–therefore, productivity–especially in economically depressed areas.