Territorial capital and growth over the Great Recession: a local analysis for Italy

The consequences of the crisis have been mainly analyzed at national/international levels, neglecting its differential effects on local areas. Notwithstanding the international character of the Great Recession, the different local structural features might have influenced the economic and social impact of the crisis, determining effects on the resilience and recovery chance. In this paper, we focus on the role of different territorial indicators by looking at how their relevance has changed during the recent crisis at provincial level. Our aim is threefold. First, we identify the strategic territorial elements which might be particularly relevant in ensuring a greater local absorption capacity. Second, we test whether the crisis has increased the role of specific local factors. In doing that, we use different measures of performance (GDP, exports and employment). Third, we control for macro-regional characteristics (i.e., North versus South) and local specific effects through a panel analysis of the dynamics of the performance variables in three sub-periods over the years 2000–2014. For that purpose, we use a multidimensional dataset for Italian provinces aiming at estimating the empirical relations between the set of territorial elements (i.e., the components of the so-called territorial capital) and the change in local performance. The results stress the role of some localized variables (i.e., human and cultural/natural/capital, agglomeration economies) over the whole period and the changing role of other territorial dimensions (material and non-material) according to the performance variable considered and during the crisis.