This paper addresses the problem of the dualism of the Italian economy, particularly of its labor market. Although the Italian labor market is considered to be the most highly regulated among OECD countries, the unemployment rate in the North, which represents two thirds of the whole economy, is...

Recent empirical work has shown that there exists a negative relation between wages and unemployment estimated across regions. Our model recognises the spatial dimension of the so-called wage curve by using a Hotelling/Salop framework in which a finite number of firms compete for heterogeneous...