The relationship between economic structure and productivity growth has been a subject of increasing interest over recent decades. The innovative focus of this paper concerns the role of the service sector in this relationship at a regional level. Services play a core role in advanced economies,...

By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...