This paper examines the dynamics of technical change in the Italian locomotive industry in the period 1850-1913. From an historical point of view, this industry presents a major point of interest: it was one of the few relatively sophisticated "high-tech" sectors in which Italy, a latecomer...

In post-Unification Italy industrialization was ever sharply sub-regional. Initially industry was largely artisanal, and located in the former political capitals; factory industry was instead attracted by the waterfalls of the subalpine Northwest. From the 1880s, as modernization accelerated,...

The locomotive industry was one of the relatively sophisticated “high-tech” sectors in which Italy, a latecomer country, was successful before 1913. Using technical data on the performance of different vintages of locomotives, we construct a new industry-level index of technical change. We...

Population ageing and lack of productivity growth characterize most western countries. We focus on Italy and investigate whether the availability of a young population represents a determinant of manufacturing productivity growth. We follow a historical comparative analysis and provide evidence...

This paper presents annual estimates of total and per-capita GDP at 1910 prices for the regions of Imperial Austria from the origin of the Dual Monarchy (1867) to the eve of WWI (1913). The time paths of regional GDP are estimated from the yield of the tax on the transfer of real and financial...

This paper provides the fi rst ever diachronic homogenous estimates of literacy rates in the Italian provinces during the period 1821-1911, by gender. The estimates exploit the age structure information reported in the population censuses of 1881 and 1911 to back cast literacy rates to the early...

This paper adopts a dynamic spatial panel data model with common factors to explain the non-stationary diffusion process of cigarette consumption across 69 Italian provinces over the period 1877-1913. The Pesaran (2015) CD-test and the exponent-test of Bailey et al. (2015) are used to show that...

The paper estimates a conditional ß-convergence model of labor productivity growth in Italy's manufacturing industry during 1871-1911, accounting for spatial dependence. The empirical evidence is based on a recent set of data at provincial (NUTS 3) level on manufacturing value added at 1911...