Abstract

The investigation of long-term economic growth and structural change in an economic systems constitutes an issue with a long tradition in economics. The aim of this paper is to analyse, from an econometric point of view, the Italian manufacturing system during the XX century. In particular, using a quite large dataset based on Industrial Census, we deal with the following aspects: (i) the role of structural change, (ii) the role of convergence and /or persistence of the growth rates, and finally, (iii) the impact of measures of specialisation and of variety on economic growth. The main findings seems to support an idiosyncratic view of the Italian industrial development with respect to the well-established litareature on the topic. In particular, two points emerge: the stability of the model of production specialisation along the period considered, and the role of variety of industrial environment as one of the leading factors in spurring local industrial growth.