The ripples of the industrial revolution: exports, economic growth, and regional integration in Italy in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

The conventional wisdom about the early stages of modern economic growth in Italy is still heavily influenced by Cafagna in his book Dualismo e sviluppo nella storia d'Italia (Padova: Marsilio 1989). He argued that the exports of primary products to industrializ ing North Western countries were the main source of growth and that exports of silk stimulated the industrialization of the North West (the "industrial triangle"). However, the benefits did not extend to the rest of the country. In this paper, we argue that this view is not supported by the trade data. Italian exports grew slowly relative to European and world trade, and exports from the North grew less than the total. This view tallies well with some recent estimates of GDP per capita, which show no increase before the Unification of Italy (1861).

Crowding out the change: business networks and persisting economic elites in the South of Italy over Unification (1840–1880)

“…Conversely, more recent works on the reconstruction of relative levels of GDP suggest that an economic gap already existed at Unification (Felice 2012(Felice , 2018Felice and Vecchi 2015). This interpretation is also supported by the analysis of international trade trends (Federico and Tena-Junguito 2014), as well as by estimates of real wages (Federico et al 2019).…”

“…Whenever present, information on firms includes the start/end date of its life, the main objective of the firm as stated in its founding act, legal form (partnership, limited liability, join-stock, etc. ), legal address, the number of offices, financial information regarding its starting capital and yearly balance 2 At present, very few works provide some regional data, from secondary sources, on pre-Unification since the 1820s, like the work by Federico and Tena-Junguito (2014) that investigates international trade trends for some pre-unitarian states and the work by Ciccarelli and Weisdorf (2019) that reconstructs literacy rates. 3 Acronym for Imprese, Finanza, Economia e Società nel Mezzogiorno-Enterprises, Finance, Economy and Society in the Mezzogiorno.…”

Geography, market potential and industrialization in Italy 1871–2001

“…The small scale of firms and the scarcely developed infrastructure and transport system, made it convenient for the firms to be located in proximity of final demand. The national market was scarcely integrated: similar regional productive structures and poor infrastructures hampered interregional trade (Cafagna ; Federico and Tena‐Junguito ). Overall, the geographic distribution of manufacturing was still comparable to that of the previous, pre‐unification States (Ciccarelli and Fenoaltea ).…”

World Trade, 1800-1938: A New Synthesis

“…We have already used our database in a number of papers on the trade of specific areas (Federico and Tena-Junguito, 2014, 2017a, 2018) and in a paper comparing the two globalisations (Federico and Tena-Junguito, 2017b). This paper outlines the sources and methods used in the construction of our series, describes the main trend in world trade and provides some basic information on the performance by polities.…”