  This work examines whether the macroeconomic divide between northern and
southern Italy is also present at the level of higher education. The analysis
confirms that the research performance in the sciences of the professors in the
south is on average less than that of the professors in the north, and that
this gap does not show noticeable variations at the level of gender or academic
rank. For the universities, the gap is still greater. The study analyzes some
possible determinants of the gap, and provides some policy recommendations for
its reduction.
