Regional Economic Development in Italy: Applying the Creative Class Thesis to a Test

Abstract

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impacts of Florida’s regional features also called regional climate or people climate on creative class as well as the regional economic development effects of the creative class in Italy on the basis of data drawn from Creativity Group Europe: Italy. The analyses show that a people climate of tolerance and population density has a strong and positive impact on a region’s share of the creative class which this, in turn, and technology has affected regional economic development enormously. Moreover, creative class is found to be superior to human capital in its positive impact on regional economic development where it is measured by regional per capita income.