“To die of aid. The failures of policies for the South (and how to avoid them". The title of the pamphlet, written by the two economists Antonio Accetturo and Guido De Blasio, already says a lot: decades of economic aid for southern Italy not only they have not mended the rift with the rest of the country, but rather they have created more problems than anything else. Accetturro and De Blasio review them all: the incentives for businesses of law 488 of 1992, the effectiveness of which was "modest"; the program contracts born in 1986, which "worked little"; the territorial pacts which would have had “no effect”, as well as the area contracts; the regional operational programmes, the impact of which was "weak and very close to zero"; and recent innovation policies, known as smart specialization strategies, even harmful, such as urban redevelopment policies, "whose significant effect has been the increase in house prices".
But in addition to not working, all these aid programs to revive the most disadvantaged areas of the country would have created undesirable results in terms of growth, productivity and employment, as well as mafia phenomena and corruption. “A disaster of rare power”, defines Nicola Rossi in the preface of the book, published by IBL Libri, also due to a non-centralized management of projects and funds. Recalling the story of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, the two authors point out that "during the period in which the aid program was managed on the basis of a centralized structure, there would have been evidence of benefits on the economic growth of the South. The evidence changes, and drastically, when local politicians begin to have a role in the management of interventions”.
THE COMPARISON WITH OTHER COUNTRIES
The comparison with other similar experiments abroad, mostly at the local level, is particularly interesting. In the United States, for example, the Tennessee Valley Authority was one of the most generous programs for local development: the interventions were mainly centered on infrastructural investments, in particular dams (for energy independence), but also canals, roads, schools. Between 1933 and 2000 the funds amounted to $20 billion and a study has shown that the TVA has been effective, curing the ills of underdevelopment and promoting the industrialization of the area, as well as improving the economic conditions of families. However, there was no systemic effect on the economy of the entire nation: the TVA was a zero-sum game for the USA, a program that reduced internal inequalities but without beneficial effects for the star economy and stripes as a whole.
Similar projects have been carried out in France, the United Kingdom and Germany, with mixed results but not as negative as the Italian ones. For example, the PATs (Prime d'Aménegement du Territoire) are the closest experiment to what has also been seen in Italy, halfway between the incentives of the 488 and the program contracts (the latter explicitly aimed at attracting companies from abroad ). Results? According to one study, positive even if quantitatively limited.
THE SCHOOL CASE: POST-EARTHQUAKE RECONSTRUCTION
A typical example of the inefficiency of aid to the South, especially in areas further disadvantaged due to natural disasters such as earthquakes, is precisely reconstruction. Here a study compared the events following two major seismic events, close in time but one in the North and the other in the South: Friuli 1976 and Irpinia 1980. Both areas received huge funding, respectively equal to 3,8% and to 5,7% of regional GDP, averaging over the decade following the earthquake. For each region, the study offers a counterfactual forecast, i.e. how much the local per capita GDP would have grown with the parameters prior to the tragic event. The results are diametrically opposite: in Friuli the real per capita GDP grew by 23% compared to the counterfactual one, while in Irpinia it was 12% lower. The difference was made by the “institutional context”: the level of corruption was decidedly higher in the southern area, and this resulted not only in the loss of benefits but also in damages.
