Effetti delle infrastrutture e del capitale pubblico sulla produttività e sulla competitività di un sistema economico

The infrastructures efficiency is a fundamental condition for the country competitiveness, and their impact is strongly characterized by local features. The increasing infrastructures demand, to support the trade flows growth and the expanding global economic integration process, met some difficulties with national and local balance sheets. In the last years, these limitations have reduced the public expenditure possibility, particularly that ones related to the capital expenditure. In this essay, after a wide and accurate literature review, we tried to give an answer to the following questions: what is the impact of infrastructure investments on the Italian economic growth, in its entire economic system and in its geographic areas? What is their impact on short and long-term development? We used the “production function approach”: the public capital was estimated applying the perpetual inventory method (using CPT data) and it was included as input within the production function, like the private capital. Within the production function, we also took into account the innovation contribution (R&D) and the human capital to determine the output and the regional productivity. Finally, we tried to evaluate disparities between Center-North and Southern Italian regions, the effects of the crisis, the role of institutional quality and the government efficiency degree in defining the productivity of a region.