Geography,market potential and industrialization in Italy 1871–2001

This paper deals with industrialization in Italy between 1871 and 2001, and is based on data on the labour force per province (NUTS 3) from population censuses. Particular attention is devoted to long‐term trends and North–South disparities. After the analysis of the geographic spread of industry and its changes, we test the role of access to markets on the distribution of the labour force in manufacturing. The results show that access to markets played a main role in Italian industrialization and in the evolution of inequalities among Northern and Southern regions.