TheConvergence of the Italian Regions and Unemployment: Theory and Evidence
研究了意大利地区1970年代初趋同进程停滞与区域失业差异扩大之间的关系，发现劳动力市场不完善（如全国最低工资过高）会降低欠发达地区的人均产出增长率。
We explore the links between the halt of the convergence process of Italian regions at the beginning of the 1970s and the increase in regional unemployment dispersion. We consider a neoclassical exogenous growth model with an imperfect labor market and show that during the transitional dynamics the imperfections of the labor market negatively influence the output growth rate. In particular, the model implies that centralized bargaining is likely to set a national minimum wage that is too high with respect to the labor productivity of the less developed regions, resulting in a negative impact on their per capita output growth. We test the implications of the model on a regional panel data set using the GMM framework. Both our market distortion measure and the unemployment rate are found to significantly lower the growth rate of per capita output.