1,721,181 research outputs found
Industrial Districts. Theoretical and Empirical Insights
No full textThe purpose of this chapter is to review and discuss the recent contributions on industrial districts. In particular, we examine two different aspects of this literature. The first concerns the widely analysed phenomenon of corporate grouping within industrial districts. The second aspect we are interested in involves the relationships between technological innovation and industrial districts
Spatial Agglomeration, Technological Innovations, and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Italian Industrial Districts
No full textThe aim of this paper is to analyse the impact on firms' productivity of innovative activities and agglomeration effects among firms belonging to Marshallian industrial districts and the possible joint effect of these two forces. We study a sample of 2,821 firms active in the Italian manufacturing industry in the period 1992-1995. Our analysis uses an original data set based on three different Istituto Nazionale di Statistica statistical sources-Community Innovation Survey, Archivio Statistico delle Imprese Attive (Italian Business Register), and Sistema dei Conti delle Imprese (Italian Structural Business Statistics)-to estimate an "augmented" Cobb-Douglas production function to account for the impact of technological innovations and district-specific agglomeration effects on a firm's productivity growth. Our data set allows us to distinguish between product and process innovations, thus, through econometric analysis, we hope to achieve a better understanding of which of these two types of innovative activities benefits most from participation in an industrial district. Our empirical results show that belonging to an industrial district and making product innovations are key factors in the productivity growth of firms and that product innovations appear to have a greater effect on the economic performance of district rather than non-district firms. Copyright (c) 2008 Copyright the Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..
The Structural Evolution of Industrial Districts and Adaptive Competitive Advantages
No full textThe work addresses the evolution of industrial district in Italy by referring to the concept of evolving competitive advantages. The key issues examined are maeasurability of economic and innovative performance of industrial districts and sustainability of performances in an evolving domestic and international settin
Knowledge spillovers, related variety and firm heterogeneity
No full textEconomic geographers and regional economists have traditionally analysed the mechanisms driving learning processes and the diffusion of knowledge among local economic actors. During the past decade, the concept of «related variety» has been frequently used to denote an agglomeration force able to explain knowledge-related advantages for firms and geographically bounded productive systems, and which arises from the heterogeneity of local industries. Besides this concept, more recent studies have emphasised the role of firm heterogeneity as an alternative – but not substitute – mecha-nism for knowledge creation and diffusion. This paper discusses the factors driving the emergence of knowledge spillovers within agglomerative spaces, and conducts a critical comparison between the concepts of industrial related variety and firm heterogeneity as two potential sources of local knowledge externalities, and, thus, of local economic development
Vertical integration, organizational governance, and firm performance. Evidence from Italian business groups
No full textAssuming transaction cost economics as a normative tool, we investigate the relationship between firms' 'observed' vertical integration choices and their economic performance. We use a two-stage methodology: in the first, a measure of governance misalignment is computed as a difference between the governance form (i.e., ownership or outsourcing) predicted by transaction cost economics and the form actually observed; the second stage consists of estimating a performance equation where the misalignment variable is introduced together with a set of independent variables. Compared with previous studies, we introduce two novelties: we use the business group as the unit of analysis to detect the ownership of vertically related productions; we assess the moderating role of geographic agglomeration in reducing the need of vertical integration. Our results confirm the importance of technology and price uncertainty in influencing vertical integration; moreover, the misalignment variable is signi..
Vincoli finanziari e domanda di fattori nell'industria manifatturiera italiana. Un'analisi a livello d'impresa
No full textCrescita, ciclo economico e cambiamento strutturale della produttività territoriale in Italia
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