Dynamic analysis of sectorial specialization and agglomeration economies in the Sicilian Local Labour Systems

Local Labour Systems (LLS) are locations in which places of work and residence come together, made up of two or more towns and have no relations with administration zones. They represent the result of the spatial aggregation of neighbouring municipalities based on the daily commuting flows of local population owing to work reasons. LLS can be thus described as self-contained economic-territorial spaces which provide a basis to sub-provincial analysis, being a useful tool for the implementation of local development policies. The improvement of census techniques has provided a growing mass of information, at town and provincial levels, revealing markedly distinguished scenarios within and across traditional regional administration bodies (Regions and Provinces) which, until the 1981 census, represented the most reliable frame for detailed statistics on the territory’s economy. The identification of the LLS by Sforzi (1989) allows keeping track of social and economic transformations which, during inter-census gaps, took place in an area where “daily activities take place in a community of people, in relation to work, leisure time and social interaction” (Volpi, 1997). More specifically, LLS are an appropriate response to the requirements of further research work concerning the different modalities in which economic phenomena occur and evolve, considering as well the strong influence, confirmed by the most recent growth theories, of the territory in shaping the socio-economic features of a local community. By referring to such a marked subdivision of the territory enables analysis tools to describe the complex configuration of the Italian economic system, characterised by local realities with strong cultural identities, deeply diverging structures and disjointed development paths. Especially at a micro level, knowledge of limited economic communities, and of the improvement they grant the larger territorial frames they belong to, encourages following the modalities of development in an area by a more accurate detection of the energies creating or hindering it. Moreover, a local scale is the most appropriate context to “grasp the complex relations between human capital accumulation and the structure and organisation of local production systems” (Antonelli e Cainelli, 2002). In 2005, ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) published updated data on LLS, based on the 2001 census. The aggregation process which took place in local production areas was crucial in order to outline the new configuration of LLS, which presently come to 686 (784 in 1991, 955 in 1981).