Local Labour Systems Research Articles

Dynamics and trends of drug dealing: a local labour system perspective

This study provides a dynamic analysis of illegal drug trafficking in the Italian region of Sardinia, using the Local Labour Systems (LLS, ISTAT) framework. Data from major regional newspapers (January 2017 - De-cember 2022) were validated through institutional reports. A multivariate biplot analysis reveals an increase in drug seizures and the Island's role as a hub for national and international drug trade, facilitated by local and traditional mafia organizations. Related crimes are also infiltrating the le-gal economy, particularly in the coastal real estate market. This study high-lights the urgent need for targeted institutional and community strategies to protect younger people, who are increasingly involved in trafficking.

Accessibility analysis in spatial planning: A case of special economic zones (SEZs) in Campania, Southern Italy

The strategic role of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) at the Italian level has also been underlined by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which has provided an important economic endowment to relaunch the national economy, in general, and the Campania region territorial economy, in particular. Literature and best practices clearly show that many factors determine the success of a SEZ, with transport accessibility being one of the key factors. This study performs a transport accessibility analysis both at national and first/last-leg levels, by comparing the accessibility of the Campania SEZ areas, the other SEZ areas in Italy and all the other Italian local labour systems. The study focuses on the Campania region, as it represents the first Italian pilot project of spatial planning through the establishment of SEZs. The Campania region exhibits, on average, good transport accessibility both at a national level (considering the multi-modal freight Italian transport network) and at a first/last-leg level (considering relevant nodes of the network, such as tollbooths, freight stations, ports, interports and airports). Also, the impact of SEZ implementation on land use planning has been discussed, to provide a useful tool for stakeholders that are interested in revitalizing the area, at different levels: i) land use policymakers, to plan interventions/planning concerning infrastructures and spatial planning; ii) national policymakers, to establish SEZs in other geographical areas; iii) investors, to assess the convenience of investments in this geographical area.

Territorial servitisation in Italian industrial districts: the role of technological and professional KIBS

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse to what extent Italian industrial districts (IDs), with their traditional manufacturing specialization, experimented a territorial servitisation process in terms of spread of specifically professional and technological knowledge-intensive business services’ activities over the period 2012–2018.Design/methodology/approachThis paper articulates knowledge-intensive business services activities in two types, technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services. It tracks their growth and their co-location with manufacturing sectors in Italian IDs by means of firm employment data and location quotients. Firm employment data is extracted from Statistical Archive of Active firms (ASIA) data set provided by Italian National Institute for Statistics (ISTAT). ASIA data is matched with ISTAT territorial identification of Italian local labour systems and IDs.FindingsIn 2018, Italian IDs featured, next to their traditional over-specialisation in manufacturing activities, an under-specialisation in knowledge-intensive business services’ activities. Nevertheless, the dynamic analysis carried out over the period 2012–2018 shows that IDs firm employment in technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services grew at a higher rate than the national average.Originality/valueThe novelty of this paper is to distinguish between technological knowledge-intensive business services and professional knowledge-intensive business services and to measure the presence and the growth of these two different types of knowledge-intensive business services in Italian IDs.

Litigios entre sujetos y cabeceras y la elaboración del Mapa de Coatlichan

La realización del Mapa de Coatlichan al parecer fue determinada por factores múltiples. Entre estos figuran una creciente presión territorial por parte de numerosos colonos españoles que solicitaron mercedes de tierras en los términos de Coatlichan, el avance de la mortandad de los indígenas debido a las epidemias y los efectos de las reformas tributarias en la dinámica del trabajo. Todo junto desestabilizaría la estructura político-territorial del señorío de Coatlichan, produciendo que ciertos sujetos pugnaran por convertirse en estancias con cajas de comunidad.En este trabajo se proponen algunas locaciones documentadas, como los referentes de los topónimos del Mapa de Coatlichan.

When History Leaves a Mark: A New Measure of Roman Roads

This paper introduces a new measure of Roman roads that has been constructed for the Italian territory. The measure computes the length in kilometers of Roman roads at different administrative and territorial levels (NUTS, Local Labor Systems, grid cells), and contributes to the literature on historical infrastructures, providing a new precise measure to use for empirical purposes and easy to extend in all those territories where Roman roads have been constructed. From a mere econometric point of view, the index allows to capture the intensity of the treatment, providing an alternative empirical strategy for all those cases where the simple binary treatment cannot be performed.

Entrepreneurship dynamics and economic cycles: an analysis for local systems and industrial districts

ABSTRACTWe propose a research framework that expressly takes into account the moderating and differentiated influence that can be exerted on the dynamics of entrepreneurship capital by both the type of local system and the economic situation. Moreover, we investigate whether industrial districts are a more favourable context for the evolution of the entrepreneurship capital. We apply this framework to data of municipalities, grouped in local labour systems, of three Spanish regions and in two sub-periods of, respectively, crisis (2007–2011) and incipient recovery (2011–2014). Results are consistent with a set of sensible relations that can be extracted from the background literature.

The effects of common culture and language on economic exchanges: evidence from tourist flows

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the impact of cultural proximity on economic exchanges and, in particular, on tourist flows. It exploits the cultural heterogeneity in South Tyrol, an Italian region bordering on Austria and Switzerland where two main linguistic groups (Italian and German) coexist. It is shown that the share of tourism by German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) positively correlates with the share of the local population belonging to the German linguistic group. This result is robust to the introduction of a very fine set of geographical dummies (local labour systems) and a number of municipality-level covariates. It also holds when instrumenting the share of the German-speaking local population with the increase of the local population in the period 1921–36 when the forced Italianization of South Tyrol took place under the Fascist regime.

Are Italian firms performances influenced by innovation of domestic and foreign firms nearby in space and sectors?

This paper aims to address three main issues. First, we investigate the relevance of spatial total factor productivity (TFP) spillovers determined by firm closeness in the Italian Local Labour Systems (LLS) of Textile. Secondly, we assess the relevance in these locations of TFP premia deriving from firm innovation, taking into account spatial and sectoral innovation. Then, we question how far spatial productivity spillovers and TFP premia spur from innovation of foreign and domestic multinationals located in the LLSs. To this purpose, we use a panel of Italian manufacturing firms for 2007 and 2010 (AIDA data) and focus on 18 Made in Italy LLS of Textile. We employ a spatial econometric approach (spatial autoregressive and spatial error models) by using the geographical coordinates at firm level. We find strong productivity spillovers at spatial level and a relevant impact of innovation on firm productivity. Evidence is also found of a positive impact of intra-sectoral innovation and from concentration of foreign firms innovation in the LLSs.

Intersectoral local development in Italy: the cultural, creative and tourism industries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of intersectoriality within the cultural, creative and tourism industries in Italian local development.Design/methodology/approachThe research design builds on the literature on culture-led development and adapts the established body of empirical research on industrial districts to tourism and cultural development. The quantitative analysis of intersectoral specialization and the clustering of cultural, creative and tourism industries in Italian local labour systems (LLSs) combines specialization indexes with principal component analysis and cluster analysis.FindingsAbout 50 per cent of Italian LLSs specialize in the economy of culture and tourism, mostly in material culture, although tourism has the highest level of specialization. There are three main patterns of agglomeration and clustering. The largest cluster is that of the cultural heritage and content and information industries, which coincides with the systems of medium-sized and large cities, followed by systems of tourism monoculture. The smallest is made up of material culture, typically made-in-Italy sectors. The tourism and material culture industries are monocultures – where tourism agglomerates, but material culture does not.Research limitations/implicationsThe analytical approach is quantitative and based on Istat’s Industry and Trade (2012) data set. Further studies are needed on the interaction between agglomerated specialized industries.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the theoretical and political debate on the value generation and innovation potential of culture and creativity, and bridges the knowledge domains of local development and managerial studies. Novel statistical evidence on intersectoral specialization and the clustering of the cultural, creative and tourism sectors in Italy at the inter-municipal level is provided. This study helps to identify an Italian model of the economy of culture and tourism.

Urban Concentration, Agglomeration Economies and the Spatial Structure of Italian Local Labor Market Areas

This study investigates the evolution of local labor systems (1996-2005) in Italy by introducing an indicator of economic agglomeration (per-land value added) with the aim to identify changes in urban hierarchy. Factors promoting local competitiveness in a traditionally-divided country such as Italy were also identified based on a joint analysis of economic growth and population increase over time. The spatial distribution of per-land value added standardized by population density was studied using a Moran's index of spatial autocorrelation identifying urban clusters and economically-dynamic rural districts. An index of economic competitiveness based on the ratio of changes over time of per-land value added to population density was proposed with the aim to evaluate direction and intensity of variation in the Italian urban hierarchy. This index was finally contrasted with background socioeconomic variables characterizing local labor systems with the objective to propose a multivariate analysis of urban concentration and hierarchy based on multiple criteria and territorial attributes. The proposed index was found correlated with variables assessing the economic structure of labor markets during 1996-2000 and with territorial variables assessing socio-spatial issues, accessibility and settlement characteristics during 2001-2005. Per-land value added could differentiate local labor systems along urban-rural gradients, evidencing a marked north-south divide when standardized to population density. Results of this study candidate per-land value added as a reliable proxy of the (changing) urban hierarchy in a given country or region.

Regional economic resilience: the experience of the Italian local labor systems

After defining the concept of resilience and its application to the regional context, the paper presents a preliminary evaluation of regional economic resilience in the case of the Italian regions. In doing so, we follow the approach by Martin (J Econ Geogr 12:1–32, 2012) and Martin and Sunley (2015) who identify three different dimensions to regional economic resilience: (a) resistance, i.e., the degree of sensitivity or depth of reaction of a regional economy to a recessionary shock; (b) recovery, i.e., the speed and magnitude of the recovery; (c) reorientation and renewal, i.e., the ability of a region to adapt in response to the shock and renew its growth path. The analysis is conducted at the local labor systems (LLS) geographical level and focuses, at this stage, only on the first two dimensions of resilience, i.e., resistance and recovery. The recessionary shock (2009–2010) is defined following the Italian National Statistical Institute approach for which a recession implies a decrease in GDP for three consecutive trimesters. The pre-recessionary period is 2007–2008 and the recovery period 2011 (as a new recession started again in Italy at the end of 2011). The results clearly point at very heterogeneous resilience for the Italian LLS.

Out of the crisis: an empirical investigation of place-specific determinants of economic resilience

ABSTRACTThis article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings.

Frammentazione comunale e spesa pubblica: una proposta di aggregazione sui sistemi locali del lavoro

Representing the needs of local communities and providing them with daily public services are the main tasks of municipalities and the way they affect both the residents’ quality of life and the firms’ competitiveness. Institutional hyper-fragmentation, however, imposes high costs to the whole system, multiplying the operating costs, which divert resources away from the services’ financing. Unlike other studies, this work does not aim to identify an optimal size for local governments, but rather to simulate the cost savings applying a more realistic territorial organization, based on daily commuting areas (Local Labour Systems by Istat). The paper assumes the administrative expenses and those for government bodies as a measure for operating costs, analyzes their components and determinants, estimating two different functions of municipal expenditure and simulates the possible saving, applying both an average need requirement and a minimum need requirement criterion.

The Evolutionary Dynamic of the Main Urban Labour Market Areas

If the Labour Market Areas consist of «territorial units identified by a set of adjacent municipalities approximated with travel-to-work daily commuting flows», the change in the number of municipalities that make them up, can be considered an indicator of the changes in the levels of socio-economic interaction within the LMAs. In particular, in the hierarchical-functional LMAs, where the daily commute to work moves from the periphery of the system toward its center, the variation in the number of municipalities that are part of it can be interpreted as the result of a change in the attractiveness of the economic and employment level of the center for its immediate geographical surroundings. Following any changes in the spatial configuration of the 21 local labour systems of the major Italian urban areas and crossing data with that relating to demographic and economic level, an interpretive framework can be built of the evolutionary dynamics of these metropolitan areas and the role they occupy within the national urban system.

L'invecchiamento demografico delle Marche e le sue ripercussioni sullo sviluppo

The article aims to analyze the impact of population aging on economic performance and on the social structure of the local labor systems of the eleven urban areas present in the Marches. The purpose is to draw a scenario of changes that will affect the medium to long term this city under the influence of multiple variables of socio-economic transformation: the aging population, migration concentrated in local contexts, the demographic behavior, industrial restructuring productive endogenous tissue, morphological and structural trends in the labor market. Statistical analyzes focus on the period from 1991 to 2004. In this regard, what matters the article is the observation of a long-term processuality which led to the current framework of the demographic structure of the Marches, drawing the signs compared to 'impact of aging populations on economic performance and social contexts considered

Talent and Creative Economy in French Local Labour Systems

This paper examines the geography of talented people using educational and occupational measures and its relationship with creative industries in French local labour systems. The link between talent and the creative economy has recently generated interest in the economic development literature as well as among policy makers. Previous studies have shown that spatial concentration of talented people in an area may bring about externalities generated by the exchange of new ideas between individuals, and this may foster the clustering of activities. Correlation and regression analyses suggest that creative industrial concentration is associated with talent as well as with tolerance and technology measures. This paper offers the empirical basis for the design of policies related to talent concentration in France. This type of policy may boost the capacity of territories for creativity and innovation, in line with the objectives set out by the European Commission.

Innovative firms and the urban/rural divide: the case of agro‐food system

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the capacity of rural and urban spaces to promote innovation in the agro‐food firms. The purpose is to determine if the rural/urban division affects the innovative behaviour of agriculture, food processing and food distribution firms.Design/methodology/approach – Business data have been obtained for over 2,000 firms based in the Valencia region, Spain. Out of them, over 200 declared to have taken part in R&D&i activities, mainly in partnership with public support institutions. The database supplies data of micro and small enterprises, which have been typically underestimated in the Spanish Survey on Technological Innovation in Enterprises. The database also makes it possible to identify the main location of agro‐food business, and the territory is divided in Local Labour Systems (LLS). LLS were in turn classified as rural or urban according to alternative criteria (OECD, national legislation). A logit model has been used in the analyses.Findings – The location of enter...

Mapping average equivalized income using robust small area methods

AbstractMeasures of economic well‐being are often needed for geographically small areas, as economic indicators may be distributed unevenly among the subsets of relatively small regions. We consider small area estimation of average equivalized income. Disposable household income data are usually available only for a sample of households, typically too small to provide reliable estimates for small regions. We consider a small area estimation technique that is robust to outliers, produces results consistent with design weighted estimates obtained for larger areas and yield maps with approximately no shrinkage. The proposed methodology is applied to the Local Labour Systems in Tuscany (Italy).

Sectoral shifts, diversification and regional unemployment: evidence from local labour systems in Italy

Using Local Labour Systems (LLSs) data, this work aims at assessing the effects of sectoral shifts and industry specialization patterns on regional unemployment in Italy over the years 2004–2008. Italy represents an interesting case study because of the high degree of spatial heterogeneity in local labour market performance and the well-known North–South divide. Furthermore, the presence of strongly specialized LLSs (Industrial Districts, IDs) allows us to test whether IDs perform better than highly diversified urban areas thanks to the effect of agglomeration economies, or viceversa. Building on a semiparametric spatial auto-regressive framework, our empirical investigation documents that sectoral shifts and the degree of specialization exert a negative role on unemployment dynamics. By contrast, highly diversified areas turn out to be characterized by better labour market performances.

A new spatial shift-share decomposition for the regional growth analysis: a local study of the employment based on Italian Business Statistical Register

This paper presents a new shift-share model to decompose the employment growth rate of a territorial unit by taking into consideration the association between industry mix and firm legal status effects measured in its neighborhood. We explicitly consider this kind of association to go beyond the problem of asymmetry found in a previous work. The empirical application refers to the data collected in the Italian Business Statistical Register and, in particular, regional employment figures in Friuli Venezia Giulia (NUTS2 level), for 219 territorial units (LAU2 level) and 12 Local Labour Systems (LLS), for the years 2001 and 2004.