Does related variety matter for creative employment growth?

Little progress has been made in the mitigation of the controversies surrounding creativity and its role for local economic development (FLORIDA, 2002; PECK, 2005). Moreover, creative industries seem to have been denied, so far, a prominent role in the intense debate about the impact of localization or urbanization economies on innovation and growth. Taking departure in the void between these two streams of literature, I deploy the concept of «related variety», as formulated by BOSCHMA (2005) and FRENKEN, VAN OORT and VERBURG (2007), to verify if well-diversified and interdependent creative industries determine more pronounced local creative employment growth. A pooled OLS panel model has been estimated for 73 Italian provinces (2008-2010), using the total amount of creative workers as dependent variable and the variety indexes as main regressors. The results are mostly consistent with the main hypothesis: related variety, in terms of complementarity between sectors, has a positive and significant effect on provincial creative employment growth.