Interest rates and convergence across Italian regions

Sheila Dow (1) , Alberto Montagnoli (2) , Oreste Napolitano (3)

1 Department of Economics
2 Department of Economics
3 Department of Economic Studies

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evidence for economic convergence across Italian regions using trends in interest rate spreads and premia as indicators of regional credit conditions. Our results indicate the presence of persistent interest rate differentials, and thus an absence of convergence across the twenty political regions, but we observe a high degree of convergence within the four macroeconomic areas. On the other hand we find evidence of a strong level of homogeneity in credit conditions within each of the four macroeconomic regions

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Science politique

Sheila Dow, Alberto Montagnoli, Oreste Napolitano. Interest rates and convergence across Italian regions. Regional Studies, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00343404.2010.536760⟩. ⟨hal-00671642⟩