T He Origins of the I Talian Regional Divide : Evidence from Real Wages , 1861 - 1913

The origins of the Italian North-South divide have always been controversial. We fill this gap by estimating a new data-set of real wages (Allen 2001) from the Unification (1861) to WWI. Italy was very poor throughout the period, with a modest improvement since the late 19 century. This improvement started in the North-West industrializing regions, while real wages in other macro-areas remained stagnant. The gap North-West/South widened until the end of the period. Focusing on the drivers of the different regional trends, we find that human capital formation exerted strong positive effect on the growth of real wages. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: we would like to thank Sara Pecchioli for outstanding research assistance and Alberto Montesi for his assistance in bibliographical research. We are particularly grateful to Robert Allen, Gabriele Cappelli, Myung Soo Cha, Stefano Chianese, Claudio Ciccarelli, Emanuele Felice and Tomas Cvrcek for sharing their data with us. We also thank Gabriele Cappelli, Federico Crudu, Emanuele Felice, Pablo Martinelli, Leandro Prados de la Escosura and Silvia Tiezzi for helpful suggestions. The paper also benefited from the comments of participants to the EH-TUNE Economic History Workshop (Siena, 2016) and to the 8th World Congress of Cliometrics (Strasbourg, 2017). JEL classification: N33, N01, N13