Anna Spadavecchia

Innovation and Foreign Technology in Italy, 1861-2011

The paper explores the long run evolution of Italys performance in technological innovation as a function of international technology transfer, reconstructing the different phases and dimensions of Italian innovative activity, tracking the transfer of foreign technological knowledge through a number of channels, analysing the impact of imported technology. The study is based on a newly constructed dataset, over the 1861-2009 period, composed of variables related to: innovation activity performance; foreign technology transfer; domestic absorptive and innovative capability. The analysis highlights, also by econometric assessment, the significant contribution of foreign technology both to innovation activity results and to productivity growth. Differences across channels of technology transfer and historical phases emerge, also in connection with the evolution of human capital endowment and domestic innovative capacity. Machinery imports contributed positively both to innovation activity and to productivity growth; inward FDI contributed positively to productivity growth, but not to indigenous innovation activity; the accumulation of technical human capital fuelled both. In the long Italian Golden Age, for the first time the association of foreign technological knowledge with indigenous innovation processes strengthened productivity significantly. More recently instead the dismal productivity growth is negatively associated with formalised innovation activity under-performance and reduced imports of disembodied technology

Did the 48-Hour Week Damage Britain's Industrial Competitiveness?

Britains 1919 introduction of a 48‐hour week for industrial workers has been highlighted as a key factor depressing its relative labour productivity. This largely ignores both any potential offset to lower hours from higher hourly productivity and the fact that the 48‐hour week was also introduced in almost all other industrialized nations (generally involving substantially greater reductions in hours). We examine the international context and the short‐term impact on British productivity, focusing on three major export industries - coal, cotton, and iron and steel. Britain did not suffer any significant relative productivity loss in these industries, while reduced working hours are shown to have been partially compensated for by higher hourly productivity.

Financing Industrial Districts in Italy, 1971-91: A Private Venture?

Italian economic performance over the last 40 years, since the end of the ‘economic miracle’ and the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969, has puzzled experts. The country has considerable weaknesses in advanced industrial sectors and has very few world-class companies. Furthermore, unlike the United Kingdom, Italy does not compensate for its industrial weaknesses with a strong service sector. Last but not least, Italy is plagued by a North–South economic divide, which has defied 40 years of regional policies and is still regarded as the major structural problem of the Italian economy. Yet in spite of all these shortcomings, Italy has managed to thrive. One of the key elements of its success is the development of industrial districts (henceforth IDs) – clusters of small firms that exploit external economies of scale and economies of specialisation, thanks to the division of labour and flexible production systems. These areas provide a major source of Italian export revenues in the textile, clothing, footwear and leather goods industries. In the conventional wisdom, IDs are associated with the economic boom in the NorthEast and Centre – the so-called ‘Third Italy’ – since the 1970s. This boom contrasted strikingly with the crisis of state-sponsored and state-owned large companies after the oil shock. The Third Italy is said to have industrialised through the emergence and development of IDs. While in the 1950s it was less developed than the so-called ‘Industrial Triangle’ (the area of classic industrialisation), the core regions of the Third Italy – Emilia Romagna and the Veneto – have now matched the degree of development of the most advanced region in the Industrial Triangle – Piedmont and Lombardy. Research on the IDs of the Third Italy, as well as those located in other European regions, has blossomed since the 1980s, but their sources of finance have not been investigated closely. Conti and Ferri claim that this neglect has allowed the long-held assumption regarding the exhaustive role of self-financing within IDs to pass unchallenged. Previous work stresses that such firms relied entirely on self-financing not only in the initial stage of their trading life but also in their later stages. However, this understanding raises some scepticism, as it does not take into account the pervasiveness of state intervention in the Italian economy, which spans from Keynesian measures of demand support to countrywide labour regulation and regional intervention. Since the early 1950s, the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Italian economy has been recognised by both economic policy makers and academic commentators. Moreover, both the Bank of Italy and the Association of Industrialists (Confindustria) considered small firms to be at a disadvantage in terms of access to market finance. This awareness contributed to the introduction of financial subsidies in favour of SMEs from the early 1950s, within the framework of national industrial policy, and from the late 1950s through the regional policy, the so-called

State Subsidies and the Sources of Company Finance in Italian Industrial Districts, 1951-1991

Industrial districts (hereinafter IDs) in Western Europe, Japan, the United States, and more recently, in emerging economies have been the subject of major and interdisciplinary debate, with the focus ranging from their production system and strategy (the flexible specialization approach) to their economic and sociopolitical characteristics.1 One of the reasons for this interest is the striking contrast between the decline of manufacturing in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s and the success of manufacturing in such countries as West Germany, Italy, and Japan. This contrast has focused international attention on the economic performance of such regions as Emilia Romagna in Italy, Baden-Württemberg in Germany, West Jutland in Denmark, and the agglomeration of Ohta Ward in Japan, all characterized by the presence of IDs.2

Corporate Innovation and the Technological Advantage of British Regions in the Interwar Period

This paper investigates the international technological specialization of the British regions in the interwar period. It is based on a novel dataset of more than 8,000 patents granted in the USA to British inventions. The analysis focuses on the impact of the dispersion of corporate innovation on the pattern of regional technological advantage, and contributes to the debate concerning the role of corporate innovation in the international relative decline of the British economy in the interwar period. Overall, the rise of corporate innovation in the largest firms in Britain did play a significant role in the technological profile of the regions. However, corporate innovation was only to a limited extent associated with the technological fields characterised by high technological opportunities.