ABSTRACT
The regional dimension is fundamental to a study of the economic history of Italy. In particular, the forging ahead of the industrial Northwestern regions of the country since the nineteenth century and the consolidation of the “Italian economic dualism” between north and south in the twentieth century have attracted the attention of scholars. This chapter looks at the development over two centuries of the industrial sector in the NUTS-2 Italian regions. We explore what elements influenced the early location of industries in the period leading up to World War I and how the unbalanced industrial geography has largely persisted ever since. The chapter reviews the main contributions to this area, both quantitative and qualitative, and proposes an interpretative model, based on the Heckscher-Ohlin theory of factor endowment and on the new economic geography theory of market access, to explain the location of Italy’s industrial sectors between 1871 and 2001.
