THE ESTIMATION OF THE COSTS OF INSULARITY THROUGH A REGRESSIVE ECONOMETRIC MODEL APPLIED TO SICILY

The geographic nature of the islands determines a peculiar condition of peripherality and specific accessibility problems often associated with the presence of structural delays in development processes. Data on the gaps due to insularity, as the case of Sicily clearly shows, returns an alarming picture that highlights employment imbalances, high poverty, high costs for transport, widespread margins, reduced internationalization and a decisive infrastructural inequality. In this work we have tried to offer a contribution to the meager debate on insularity, starting from the measurement of the disadvantage of insularity in economic terms. For Sicily, an estimate of the costs related to the i…