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ABSTRACT  The 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.

Italian industrial districts (IDs) recently attracted international attention because their performance during the last few decades contradicted the alleged weakness of industrial structures based on SMEs in "traditional" sectors. The book analyses some developments taking place in Italian IDs and local systems of production that can represent a new stage of evolution for the backbone of the Italian economy. Based on the extensive use of original databases three main trajectories of change in IDs are presented. The first trajectory is the increasing role of "groups" of manufacturing SMEs arising from mergers and acquisitions as well as spin-off growth processes at the "family firms" level. The second one is the consolidation of innovation capabilities in IDs. And the third one is the internationalisation process of Italian IDs through both trade and foreign direct investment. The essays suggest that Italian IDs are again evolving by coherent adaptations which will have, however, uncertain outcomes

PurposeThis paper aims to show that the business group – i.e. the set of firms under common ownership and control – is the most appropriate unit to study the behavior and organization of firms and define their boundaries. Particular emphasis is given to notions such as unitary direction – i.e. the influence over strategic decisions – and administrative co‐ordination which allow owners to exercise supervision and authority over the controlled companies.Design/methodology/approachGiven these aims the paper adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that relies on economics, management and law. This multidisciplinary approach is necessary for analyzing the different aspects characterizing business groups in terms of ownership, control, economic synergies between firms and internal organizational mechanisms. To support the propositions, data and information from various sources are used, ranging from official statistics on the firm's population, to sample surveys, case studies and juridical evidence. The use of different sources is justified not only by the interdisciplinary nature of the problem but also by the lack of systematic statistical evidence on the phenomenon of business groups.FindingsThe authors suggest that when a company is part of a group, the business group rather than the individual company is the most appropriate "unit" for analyzing the organization and behavior of firms. This does not deny that in some cases it can be worthwhile using the legal boundary as the appropriate unit; however, most of the empirical analyses about firms consider the legal boundary without considering whether companies are independent or part of a business group.Originality/valueThe authors show that forms of unitary direction and administrative co‐ordination are common in business groups; these forms can be assimilated to the internal organization of firms. For this reason they propose that the group rather than the individual company is the appropriate unit to delimit the boundary of the firm. In this sense, their main conclusion is that not considering the business group underestimates the actual firm boundaries.

AbstractUsing a large unbalanced panel dataset of more than 12,000 Italian manufacturing firms for the period 1999–2007, this paper investigates the role of geographic concentration and related variety on firms' total factor productivity (TFP). The main idea is that diversification—captured by a measure of vertically related variety—promotes firm innovativeness and, consequently, productivity, but when the technology has been consolidated, firms join specialized clusters that enhance efficiency. Our results suggest that the effect on firms' TFP of geographic concentration is stronger than that of related variety. We also confirm previous findings on the relevance of agglomeration forces for small firms compared with medium and large firms, where these agglomerative forces do not seem to influence TFP.

We study the driving forces behind the adoption of environmental innovations (EI) in the Italian industry over 2006-2008 through analyses of the new wave of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data that covered for the first time environmental innovation adoptions. We investigate whether the first phase of EU ETS has exerted some effects on environmental innovations by using a very large sample of italian manufcturing firms. Estimates show that external forces and complementarity with other management practices are particularly relevant to increase the adoption of relatively new and radical technologies: relationships with other firms and institutions, local public funding, group membership are the key factors. The role of ETS on EI seems instead to be weak: it drives innovation if we compare ETS and non ETS firms, but the stringency itself does not matter, due to sector idiosyncratic factors and to the fact that stability of policy also matters.