Try it for yourself! When you've leveled up, just up your skills and watch the damage you do.
You'll see that for wands, the 'actual damage' is benefited from the dexterity stat and the magic damage is benefited from the magic stat. Since higher level wands are mostly magic damage, you'll want to focus on that if you're serious about high wand damage.
In short: you should be dual-wielding if you have an off-hand weapon with many powerful effects; otherwise use a shield.
When dual-wielding the effects from both weapons are added together and applied with each attack. So if your off-hand pistol has +X life-steal, then all of your attacks will have life-steal.
However, DPS is only the better of the two weapons (discovered with a little testing). Attack speed averages because attacks alternate between the two wielded weapons, each taking the time of the respective weapon. For example, if you have a quick pistol but a slow wand, the pistol attacks will happen very quickly after each wand attack, but wand attacks will happen slowly after each pistol attack.
What this means is that you should only dual-wield if you have an off-hand with a fast attack speed and many useful effects.
The Dual-Wield skill increases damage significantly, but it is geared towards Berserker as most of his skills add the DPS of both weapons to skill damage. Being an Alchemist, this skill should not interest you nor affect your decision.
Usually the defense of an off-hand shield is more valuable than a weapon that only adds its value in effects. Also, as your mana regeneration increases you will be using only skills, meaning your weapon is never used whereas a shield is (passively).
Best Answer
The only effect of the dual wielding talent in Torchlight is to increase the damage done while dual wielding - the act of using a weapon in each hand, itself, is unrelated.
If you have two melee weapons, you will alternate back and forth on your attacks. If you have a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, you will only swap to the melee weapon if you are within range, otherwise you will exclusively use the ranged weapon.