Urban non-urban agglomeration divide: is there a gap in productivity and wages?

This paper investigates the productivity-wage relation in the Italian Lombardy region using a novel and integrated database of firms’ plant. We find that agglomeration economies play a significant role in affecting productivity and wages differentials at the local level. However, this effect depends on the technological and knowledge-based resources characterising the industrial mix within the urban and non-urban agglomerations, also controlling for firm-specific factors concerning, in particular, job-related characteristics. High-density urban areas show a positive wage gap in the high technology and knowledge-intensive services, brought about higher productivity. In contrast, manufacturing plants show a reduction of the gap only partially offset by sectoral specificities.