Spatial-sectoral skill polarization: is South of Italy not lost?

A new paradigm seems to emerge in the international division of labor in Eu-rope and in the most advanced production systems all over the world: on the one hand, labor patterns in knowledge-intensive sectors show different trajectories compared with the observed performance of employment in other sectors. In this framework, employment in Italy shows a similar behavior, but at a slower pace of convergence to this new paradigm, at least with respect to its main competitors (Germany, France, Great Britain and, in perspective, Spain). Differences emerge among its regional macro-areas: Southern Italy is diverg-ing from the rest of the overall Italian economy. This area, despite the dimension of the current gap with the rest of Italy, can traditionally count on a higher dynamism in the “creative destruction” process necessary to respond to external threats than of the Center and the North of Italy. This may give room for a cau-tious optimism about the possibilities of the South to resume an important role in the long-term growth of the country. In this paper, using constrained logistic functions, we try modeling diverse forms of labor substitution, comparing the dynamics of the structural gaps be-tween Southern Italy and the rest of the country and providing an answer to the question: “Is the South of Italy definitively lost?”