Old and new Italian multinational firms

After a quick profile of Italian foreign direct investments since 1900 and a short review of the main explanations of the lagged multinational growth by Italian manufacturing companies, a quick glimpse of business histories is given to the only two still today living "old protagonists" (Pirelli, Fiat) and to three old corporate groups (Olivetti, SNIA Viscosa, Montecatini-Montedison) who had also reached a significant degree of full internationalization early in the XX century, but during the second postwar period underwent profound dismantling of their original business mission. Finally the paper focuses on few cases of "new protagonists", mid-size family companies who undertook a true multinational strategy only in the most recent decades and today represent the core of the Italian "fourth capitalism".Italian industry-multinational companies

Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Ost und West: Perspektiven und Probleme

Vorwort 3 I. Einleitung 5 II. Ost-West-Handel 8 a. Entwicklung 8 b. Aussichten für die nähere Zukunft 12 c. Der Handel mit China 14 d. Der sowjetische Ferne Osten 15 e. Komparative Vorteile im Ost-West-Süd-Handel . . 16 f. Gewinne aus dem Handel 17 III. Technologietransfer 20 IV. Die Finanzierung des Handels: Das Problem der Verschuldung . 26 V. Institutionelle Probleme 33 VI. Zusammenfassung und Schlußfolgerungen 37 Verzeichnis der Tabellen ^9 Literaturverzeichnis 40 --

Conoscere la Cina

Il volume raccoglie gli atti del convegno organizzato dalla e presso la Fondazione Agnelli, a Torino, il 4-5 aprile 2000 in collaborazione con l'Associazione italia-Cina di Roma. Vari aspetti della società, dell'economia, della demografia, della politica e della cultura cinese vengono esplorati, anche con riferimento alla nuova collocazione geopolitica e al crescente rilievo internazionale assunto da questo grande Paese.- Indice #6- L’ammissione della Cina al World Trade Organization, Fabrizio Onida #10- La politica cinese verso le minoranze, Oliviero Rossi #20- Il sistema giuridico cinese: caratteri tradizionali e lineamenti attuali, Luigi Moccia #32- Invarianti e proiezioni geopolitiche della Cina, Franco Mazzei #66- La riforma della pubblica amministrazione nella Cina del nuovo millennio, Alessandra Lavagnino #104- Riscrivere la storia e la cultura della Cina antica: credenze religiose, correnti di pensiero e società alla luce delle recenti scoperte archeologiche, Maurizio Scarpari #122- I cinesi nel mondo e in Italia, Patrizia Farina #136- "Gioia" e "Felicità": marche e marchi ccidentali nella pubblicità cinese contemporanea, Maurizia Sacchetti #158- La scommessa politica nella definizione delle cucine regionali cinesi, Françoise Sabban #168- Il giornalismo italiano e la Cina, Giorgio Mantici #186- I cinesi e il problema religioso, Lionello Lanciotti #20

Produttività, competitività e commercio estero: l'Italia nell'Europa alle soglie del nuovo millennio.

Elementi interpretativi sulla competitività dell'Italia nel contesto europe

Official Development Assistance: pre-requisites for effectiveness and proposal for improvements

This paper has been prepared as a contribution of the Italian Social and Economic Council to the recurrent debate about critical issues on official development assistance, with some specific reference to the Italian position in this area. After some introductory remarks in Section 1, in Section 2 the paper starts from the recent provocative essay by Dambisa Moyo “Dead Aid” and then examines several issues that hinge upon aid effectiveness, its measurement and complex causations. Thus no wonder that so many opposite conclusions have been drawn from various attempts to find econometric evidence about a positive causal relation between aid and aggregate growth. Section 3 covers a series of recommendations and proposals. Section 4 summarizes and concludes.

US, Europe and the developing world: transatlantic challenges for world integration.

For more than a decade Europe has been lagging behind the US in growth of aggregate GDP, per capita GDP, productivity, employment, as well as in demographic selection of new firms and in the design of market-friendly regulations. While an increasing trade agglomeration around large "regional" areas (NAFTA, Asia-Pacific, Europe) has taken place in the last decades, the US has become the primary external market outlet for many partners, including Western Europe. Moreover, trends in stocks and flows of foreign direct investment, while reflecting the increasing share of developing Asia and (to a lesser extent) of Central-Eastern Europe as countries of destination, do reveal a persistent solid Transatlantic interdependence through multinational production. An accelerating world integration of low-wages/highly productive emerging economies raises in US and Europe mounting fears of "excessive competition", massive net job destruction, downward spiral in domestic wages. While most empirical evidence points to positive "trade multiplier effects" from integration of newly industrializing economies in world economic development, national governments and international institutions are under pressure to provide effective "trade adjustment" policy measures, mainly aimed at restructuring declining activities, re-training manpower, improving infrastructures for labour mobility, favouring more technology generation and diffusion. Europe is seriously lagging under this respect. After the failure of Cancùn, both US and Europe share a big responsibility in providing new impetus to the ailing Doha Development Round. Under the pressure of the newly formed G-20, but also of the mounting tensions on the world political scenario (Islamic terrorism, Palestine, Middle East), both sides of the Atlantic seem aware of the great stakes and in search of new negotiating moves.Europe; Transatlantic; Integration

La Proiezione Internazionale dell'Italia

Despite a declining trend in its world export market share since the beginning of the 90s, Italy is still today the world’s 7th exporter and importer, 7th as share of world GDP, 25th in the ranking of world per capita incomes in PPP terms. However Italy’s potential growth of output and productivity is dragged by its quite anomalous industrial structure and patterns of trade: a very high relative share of manufacturing firms with less than 50-100 employees and corresponding very low share of large firms at the opposite end of size distribution; a genuine weakness in most scale intensive and high-tech industries. Italy’s remarkable competitive advantages in top quality traditional consumer goods (personal care, housing) and in many segments of intermediate and producer durable goods (mechanical engineering, electrical and non electrical) are supported by a substantial amount of product and process innovation. But these patterns of output specialisation are increasingly inadequate to assure creation and training of high-skill jobs, propensity to invest in R&D-based innovation (less exposed to imitation by low-cost countries in their catching-up development process), capacity to invest in durable brandnames and robust worldwide distributive networks, ability to compete with multinational strategies and oligopolistic rivalry.Italy, Trade, International competitiveness

Labour standards and ILO’s effectiveness in the governance of globalization

The paper starts with a brief recollection of International Labor Office (ILO)’s historical milestones – ILO being the only tripartite international organization with representatives of labour, industry and governments - covering the main Conventions on labour standards (including the four “core labour standards”). Then the paper focuses on ILO’s main duties as a supervisor of labour markets conditions and as an agent and direct player with local governments: designing appropriate policies for a “decent work” agenda in the world, pushing for the widest possible adoption of the Conventions themselves by member countries, monitoring compliance of those standards, promoting bilateral and multilateral actions with governments aimed at correcting major violations of these standards. Special emphasis is given to possible improvements in the effectiveness of ILO’s procedures and initiatives, under the assumption that actions based on positive incentives are far more plausible and effective than negative sanctions, especially in view of greater coherence between ILO and WTO mission in promoting a better governance of globalization. Examples of such actions are moral suasion on policy makers aimed at affecting labour legislation, design of unilateral trade concessions and/or regional trade liberalization agreements conditional on actual commitment to improve labour and social conditions in the target country (such as GSP+), joint initiatives with multinational companies and local government in developing countries so as to diffuse school attendance and eradicate worst forms of child labour , training of public administrators-legal experts-union leaders trough the ILO’s special training office in Turin (Italy). Summary references are made to the ongoing debate about globalization, inequalities, “race to the bottom”, quality of institutions. The final section summarizes major conclusions and recommendations that have been approved by CNEL’s general assembly on June 5, 2008, also in view of the annual meeting of AICESIS (International Association of Economic and Social Councils) held in Rome on June 12, 2008.Labour standards, ILO, WTO, globalization