Although there continues to be considerable debate about the impact of European integration on the EU regions, studies in this eld have mainly investigated the convergence-divergence issue, while the e⁄ect of trade on regional performance has attracted few empirical studies. A bootstrapped DEA metafrontier framework used in this study, as a rst stage of analysis, is exploited to account for the heterogeneity between the Italian regions in the whole period and in two distinct time frames before and after EMU implementation. In a second stage, using a partial least squares model, the technology gaps estimated for each period are regressed, investigating possible factors that may have a⁄ected regional performance. Our ndings reveal a signicant improvement for the Italian regions since 1993, a paradoxically unchanged behavior for e¢ ciency performance in the Center-North regions, and clear identication of which regions performed better in terms of the technology gap. Inclusion of variables related to international trade performance in the model indicates that trade is of major importance for better regional performance.
Modelling the incidence of international trade on Italian regional productive efficiency using a meta-frontier DEA approach.
Oreste Napolitano
;
2017-01-01
Abstract
Although there continues to be considerable debate about the impact of European integration on the EU regions, studies in this eld have mainly investigated the convergence-divergence issue, while the e⁄ect of trade on regional performance has attracted few empirical studies. A bootstrapped DEA metafrontier framework used in this study, as a rst stage of analysis, is exploited to account for the heterogeneity between the Italian regions in the whole period and in two distinct time frames before and after EMU implementation. In a second stage, using a partial least squares model, the technology gaps estimated for each period are regressed, investigating possible factors that may have a⁄ected regional performance. Our ndings reveal a signicant improvement for the Italian regions since 1993, a paradoxically unchanged behavior for e¢ ciency performance in the Center-North regions, and clear identication of which regions performed better in terms of the technology gap. Inclusion of variables related to international trade performance in the model indicates that trade is of major importance for better regional performance.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
