The race between the snail and the tortoise: skill premium and early industrialization in Italy (1861–1913)

Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, New Results

“…The regional variation in the onset of decline matches the timing of seventeenth-century plague outbreaks, thus supporting the hypothesis that epidemics were decisive in triggering Italy's prolonged recession (Alfani and Percoco 2019). We also provide a novel long-term skill premium for historical Italy, finding that this ranged around 50 percent across the entire early-modern period consistent with the size of the skill premium observed early into the modern era (Federico et al 2019). Matching the size of the skill premium in early-modern London as well, our finding, therefore, contests the conventional view that premodern skill premiums were significantly higher in the south of Europe than in the northwest (van Zanden 2009).…”

“…London (Allen) CN Italy (Allen) Rome (Rota and Weisdorf) Confidence band 95% construction workers earning some 50 percent more than their unskilled counterparts throughout the early-modern period-a level that also aligns with the skill premium reported for Italy after 1861 (Federico et al 2019). The pre-existing skill premium for Central-Northern Italy is bizarrely high in comparison, with skilled workers consistently receiving pay rates twice as large as those of their unskilled colleagues.…”

International Migration Responses to Modern Europe’s Most Destructive Earthquake: Messina and Reggio Calabria, 1908

“…2, p. 234). The flow of migration also consisted primarily of individuals employed in unskilled occupations (Federico et al 2021;Pérez 2021;Spitzer and Zimran 2018). According to official Italian emigration statistics, in 1905Italian emigration statistics, in -1908.9 percent of Calabrian migrants and 38.1 percent of Sicilian migrants were employed in agriculture.…”

Internal Borders and Population Geography in the Unification of Italy

“…Out of the literature on the Italian economy in the long run have emerged numerous hypotheses about factors holding back development. Recent contributions, which typically adopt a regional perspective, have focused on human capital (Ciccarelli and Weisdorf 2019;Federico et al 2021;Postigliola and Rota 2021); social capital (Cappelli 2017;Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2016;Mariella 2022); institutions (Federico and Dincecco 2021;de Oliveira and Guerriero 2018;Di Martino, Felice, and Vasta 2020); and natural resources and geography (Malanima 2016;Bardini 1997;A'Hearn and Venables 2013). Here our focus is on an older concern, one that loomed especially large in the minds of contemporaries: the problem of market fragmentation.…”