Regional and National Industrial Policies in Italy, 1950s-1993. Where Did the Subsidies Flow?"

This paper compares the magnitude and distribution of regional subsidies to Southern industry to those of subsidies available in the country as a whole through the national industrial policy. The comparison highlights the fact that from the second half of the 1970s, industry located in the most prosperous region of Italy, the North-West, was the main beneficiary of subsidised credit. These findings refine our understanding of the regional policy for Southern Italy and the reasons for its limited achievements. Moreover, the redirection of subsidies away from the South cast doubts on the extent of the Italian government’s commitment to its programme of regional development.Regional policy; Industrial policy; Regional pattern of government spending

Innovation and Foreign Technology in Italy,1861-2011

The paper explores the long run evolution of Italy’s 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 technologyItaly,Technology Transfer,Innovation,Absorptive Capability,Patenting

Fundamental patents, national intellectual property regimes, and the development of new industries in Britain and America during the second industrial revolution

Several “new” industries of the second industrial revolution were characterised by one, or few, “fundamental” patents, without which manufacture of a viable product was not practicable. The degree of monopoly control that such patents conveyed was mediated by national socio-legal regimes, encompassing both patent law and its interpretation and enforcement. Using four case-studies (two for the UK - a low anti-trust environment, and two for the USA - a high anti-trust environment) we show that fundamental patents were major determinants of monopoly power, industry structure, barriers to competition, and consumer prices. Impacts could extend beyond the life of the patents, owing to first mover advantages and path-dependent processes. Meanwhile national socio-legal environments, the nature of the fundamental patents, the strategies of the patent owners, and the nature of the specific product technology could have important (and sometimes unforeseen) consequences

State subsidies and the sources of company finance in italian industrial districts, 1951-1991.

The dominant view about Italian Industrial Districts (IDs) suggests that firms within IDs finance themselves through internal sources alone. This view, based on Northeastern IDs - on which the mainstream literature concentrates - implicitly denies any potential role played by state subsidies available to small firms within the framework of national and regional industrial policies from the 1950s onwards. This thesis, focusing on a Southern ID, tests whether IDs can also emerge within the context of state intervention, and whether Southern IDs relied heavily on state funding in contrast with North-eastern IDs, which drew on public funds to a much smaller extent. The thesis employs a two-pronged approach, analysing the issue from the perspective of both the lending institutions and the recipient firms. It discusses the development of the 'Extraordinary intervention for the South' - designed to overcome Southern backwardness - and compares it with the national industrial policies. It moves on to provide a detailed breakdown of the extent to which firms in Southern Italy benefited from subsidised loans and grants more than firms in the North-east, where far fewer firms sought subsidies. The importance of subsidies for the recipient companies is studied using two samples of small manufacturing firms, within the Southern ID of Barletta and the North-eastern ID of San Mauro Pascoli. The analysis of the capital structure of the two samples confirms the greater reliance of Southern companies on subsidies, whereas private finance was more important for the North-eastern counterparts. However, subsidies to companies in the North-eastern ID appear to be more effective. The thesis concludes that the received interpretative framework regarding the types of finance used by companies within IDs is severely limited, in that the role of state subsidies cannot be neglected, particularly for Southern IDs, but also for the more prosperous North-eastern IDs

The political economy of financing local production in Italy, 1950-1990s

Francesca Carnevali’s work stressed the key role of politics and institutions in determining a country’s banking structure, which in turn shapes its industrial structure. Segmented banking systems in France, Germany and Italy allowed different types of banks to specialize in different market segments, ensuring the fulfilment of smaller firms’ financial requirements. In Britain, local banks did not survive the wave of amalgamation of the 1960s. This void left small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and banks facing high transaction costs on the credit market due to little – or even an absence of – knowledge of the local business environment. Focusing on the Italian case this paper discusses how major parties in the political spectrum, as well as economic institutions such as the Bank of Italy, agreed to foster SMEs after the Second World War. This led to the establishment of a segmented banking system, in which local banks were preserved to serve the financial needs of SMEs clustered in local production systems. Then the paper moves on to explore the establishment of the medium-credit institutes (the Mediocrediti and the Artisan Bank) and their provision of additional financial support to SMEs and to artisan firms

Introduction : new advances in quantitative business history

This introduction presents a special issue of Revista de Historia Industrial - Industrial History Review devoted to quantitative business history. After a brief overview of the role and position of quantitative approaches in the methodological debate in business history, we summarize some of the salient points of the articles included in this special issue. These articles highlight the valuable use of quantitative datasets and methods in business history. They also testify to the critical contribution of quantitative analyses in the historical investigation of topics in business strategy and the study of causal relationships between foundational elements of the business and financial systems. The papers also reveal the laborious process of constructing historical datasets suitable for quantitative analyse

The banking-industry relationship in Italy: large national banks and small local banks compared (1913-1936)

Using a large dataset of Italian joint-stock companies, this article analyses the networks of corporate interlocks of the major universal banks and twenty most ‘central’ local banks in a critical period of Italian industrialisation. The networks of the two types of banks were largely independent, with universal banks being affiliated principally to larger concerns in electricity, transport and storage, and financials; and local banks to riskier, younger and smaller firms in light manufacturing. The article then explores whether the bank-industry relationship in Italy reflected the hegemony of banks and followed a bank-control model. Our analysis does not support that view. It rather indicates that interlocking directorates were driven principally by a convergence of interests between banks (monitoring customers) and industrial firms (interested in tapping capital and credit flows), with the latter exerting a slightly higher influence over the former. This significantly differentiates Italy from Germany and the USA, where banks had a more dominant position in the corporate system