How many Italies ? What Data Show about Growth and Convergence across Italian Regions, 1970-91

The paper analyses the evidence about the growth of the Italian regions over the period 1970-91; in particular it studies the beta-convergence across regions, the convergence of each region towards its possible steady-state equilibrium path and the existence of groups of regions sharing the same stochastic trend. Besides the specific results on Italian regions, the paper provides and analyses some applications of different econometric methods for the investigation of the growth process