| Concentrating on per capita income, industrial output, and agricultural productivity, I first attempt to quantify uneven regional development in nineteenth-century Italy. These estimates suggest that the Northwest was the only zone to demonstrate any sign of economic development in the Kuznetsian sense. It experienced important structural change involving substantial growth of the industrial sector fueled by increasing agricultural productivity. In addition, it experienced a significant increase of per capita income which, unlike the Northeast-central region and the South, appears to have become self-sustaining, at least by the early 1890s. On the eve of World War I, the regional differences in the growth rates of industrial and agricultural output had turned Italy into a nation with three distinct zones of economic development.;I next analyze whether regional differences in land tenure arrangements help to explain regional economic inequalities. I estimate regional rates of growth in agricultural productivity and then correlate these with regional land tenure patterns. It appears that the self-sustained development in the Northwest was accompanied by rapid increases in agricultural output and productivity. These regional differences in agricultural productivity growth reflect institutional differences in land tenure arrangments. The farmer in the Northwest with the security of land ownership or a long-term lease was more inclined to make productivity-raising investments than the sharecropper in the Northeast-central region or the latifundista in the South. This meant that the Northwest was in a better position to recover and expand after the agricultural crisis of the 1880s.;Finally, I examine the role of government policy in reinforcing these institutional differences and find that these agrarian institutions were, at least in part, rooted in political economy. Guided by its own self-interest and that of distributive coalitions, the policies of the state helped to create and reinforce the latifundo system that dominated and retarded the economy of southern Italy. The political power of the southern landowners and the ideological position of laissez-faire guaranteed policies that either benefited the southern landowner or, at the very least, were never a threat to his position. |
