Investimenti, produttività e occupazione nelle regioni europee: evidenze ed interpretazioni da un'analisi di ''cluster''

With an application extended to 109 regions within European Union for the period 1977 - 1996, a joint analysis of investment, productivity and employment growth differentials is considered. We describe the temporal evolution of the standard deviation for the main aggregates. Stability of dispersion for investment per employee and some convergence in productivity are detected. We apply a K-Means Cluster Analysis to Crenos Regio dataset updated with data for investments and sectoral composition of output provided from Cambridge Econometrics. The results identify four groups of regions according to their structural characteristics and dynamic performances. Regions starting from a lower levels of income per capita and higher shares of agriculture experience as a whole a catching up process for productivity but with a clear differentiation between cases of success and failure in capacity of increasing their employment rates. For the more mature regions of Europe we find that the share of employment in services has a positive association with employment growth whereas a negative relation with productivity growth is observed.