Where do we go from here? Market access and regional development in Italy (1871–1911)
本文检验新经济地理学假说，量化意大利各地区市场潜力，发现只有国内市场潜力与人均GDP显著相关，而国际市场未能解释南北差距，表明国内市场对增长更为关键。
Italy has been characterized, throughout its unitary history, by large regional differentials in income, level of industrialization, and development. This article aims at testing the New Economic Geography hypothesis on the role of market access in explaining these regional differentials. We first quantify the market potentials of the Italian regions. We then use these estimates to study the causal link between GDP per capita and market potential. The main result of this article is that only domestic market potential, which represents the home market, shows a “traditional” North–South divide. When international markets are introduced, the South does not appear to lag behind. Regression analysis confirms that market potential is a strong determinant of GDP per capita only in its domestic formulation. This suggests that the home market in this period mattered far more for growth than the international markets, casting new light on one of the classical explanations to the North–South divide.