One year on from the first installment, part two of this study of Italian local economic dynamism presents some interesting variations to the previous findings, particularly as regards Italy’s provinces, with an analysis of certain indicators of economic capacity (population, employment and productivity) revealing several changes in the earlier rankings. Highly remarkable is the case of Como, which moves up from ninth to fourth position. The ranking for geographic macro-areas, on the other hand, has remained essentially the same, with more positive trends (as expected) being recorded for Northern Italy, though the top two positions were reversed, with Northwest Italy unseating the Northeast from its first placing, even if only by a narrow margin.
Part two of this study also introduces two new very significant indicators: a patent activity index and a business demographic indicator, which is indicative of the level of research activity being conducted in local high-tech manufacturing sectors. This enables the net growth in the number of hi-tech manufacturing firms to be captured and elements of economic dynamism to be highlighted for local areas that do not as yet rate particularly highly on employment and labor productivity indicators.