The contribution of physical and human capital accumulation to Italian regional growth: a nonparametric perspective

This paper examines changes in the labor productivity, efficiency, technology, and physical and human capital experienced by different regions in Italy between 1980 and 2006. Cobb-Douglas and translog production specifications are not supported by the data. Thus, non-parametric methods are used to compute the Malmquist indices and their components. Moreover, the bootstrap technique allows us to determine the confidence intervals of all components of the labor productivity decomposition. The results suggest that the contributions of efficiency, technology, and physical and human capital accumulation to labor productivity growth differ significantly between Southern Italy and the remainder of the country