Roberto Basile

Acquisition versus Greenfield Investment: The Location of Foreign Manufacturers in Italy

This paper investigates the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Italy over the period 1986-1999. FDI are measured through the frequencies of acquisitions and greenfield investments per province and sector, so count data models are applied. The results show that the location determinants strongly differ according to the foreign entry mode. Unlike the results of many other studies, foreign ventures do not emulate their domestic counterparts. When foreign firms decide to make a greenfield investment in Italy, they are strongly influenced by location decisions of previous foreign investors, but they must also take into account congestion costs mainly linked to the lack of available labor force in the big northern cities. Thus, Southern provinces (with high unemployment rates) have a high potential attractiveness, which might be implemented with a strong investment in public infrastructures, as demonstrated by simulations. Foreign acquisitions are affected not only by supply of acquisition candidates, but also by the other location characteristics, such as the demand level, public infrastructure, stock of foreign firms and unit labor costs.

Intra-Distribution Dynamics of Regional Per-Capita Income in Europe: Evidence from Alternative Conditional Density Estimators

This paper compares different conditional density estimators to analyze the cross-sectional distribution dynamics of regional per-capita incomes in Europe during the period 1980-2002. First, a kernel estimator with fixed bandwidth gives evidence of convergence. With a modified estimator with variable bandwidth and mean-bias correction, the dominant income dynamics is that of persistence and lack of cohesion: only a fraction of very poor regions improves its position over time converging towards a low relative income. An alternative graphical technique (more informative than the traditional contour plot) is also proposed to visualize conditional densities. Finally, a first-order spatial autoregressive model is applied to estimate the effect of spatial dependence on the evolution of income distribution.

Interregional Migration of Human Capital and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Italian Provinces

Abstract Since the mid-1990s interregional migration flows in Italy have dramatically increased, especially from the South to the North. These flows are characterized by a strong component of human capital, involving a large number of workers with secondary and tertiary education. Using longitudinal data for the period 2002-2011 at NUTS-3 territorial level, we document that long-distance (i.e., South-North) net migration of high-skill workers has increased the unemployment at origin and decreased it at destination, thus deepening North-South unemployment disparities. On the other hand, long-distance net migration of low-skill workers has had the opposite effect, by lowering the unemployment at origin and raising it at destination. Further evidence also suggests that the diverging effect of high-skill migration dominates the converging effect of lowskill migration. Thus, concerns for an ‘internal brain drain’ from Southern regions look not groundless.