Internationalisation : threat or opportunity for the survival of the Italian district model?

National borders in Europe have been opening since 1992 and the Union is expanding to embrace more countries prompting enterprises to consider alternative and more attractive locations outside their home country to handle part of their activities (Van Dijk and Pellenbarg, 2000; Cantwell and Iammarino, 2002). International relocation is becoming more and more popular even for small and medium-sized firms that are involved in a growing internationalisation process, mirroring the path of multinational enterprises. Italy, like other industrialised countries, is experiencing a fragmentation of the production chain: firms tend to shift high labour-intensive manufacturing activities to areas characterised by an abundance of low-cost labour (i.e. Central Eastern Europe, India, South East Asia, Latin America, Russia and Central Asia). The internationalisation process by Italian district SMEs has assumed significant dimensions. It has become a relevant topic in recent economic debate because of its consequences for the local context and, in particular, the implication for the survival of the Italian district model (see, among others, Becattini, 2002; Rullani, 1998 and Cor, 2000). The purpose of the paper is twofold: it aims at (i) identifying the managerial approaches to the internationalisation process adopted by the Italian district SMEs and by the Industrial District (ID) itself and (ii) at investigating whether the international delocalisation to the South Eastern European countries (SEECs) constitutes a threat or an opportunity for the Italian district model. The paper is organised as follows. The general introduction is followed by a description of the evolution of the internationalisation processes in Italy over the last three decades. Section three presents a discussion of the internationalisation strategies adopted by Italian SMEs. Section four focuses on the internationalisation process of the Italian industrial districts SMEs. A review of the studies on the subject is offered in section five. Section six presents a qualitative study on the internationalisation process as undergone by sports shoes manufacturers in the Montebelluna district, in north-east Italy. This study shows different managerial strategies to the internationalisation process and emphasises that the motivations can evolve over time, from originally cost-saving to increasingly market-oriented or global strategies. On the basis of a literature review, section seven investigates whether internationalisation constitutes a threat (i.e. loss of jobs and knowledge) or an opportunity (i.e. enlargement of the ID, update district s competitiveness) for the district model. Finally, some summarising remarks in section eight conclude the paper

EVEN ALLOCATIONS FOR GENERALISED RATIONING PROBLEMS

We study an extension of the standard rationing problem, consisting of the allocation of utility losses. We assume neither linearly transferable utilities nor risk averse agents. As a consequence, the utility possibility sets need not be convex or smooth. This problem is referred to as the generalised rationing problem. We introduce the notion of even allocations as a solution concept that extends the random arrival rule to this general scenario. Moreover, we show that, when the feasible set is convex, this solution can be characterised by a suitable reformulation of the axioms that define the Nash bargaining solution.Rationing Problems, Non-Transferable Utilities, Nash Bargaining Solution, Clarke Cones.

Living Standards In South Africa’s Former Homelands

I exploit the sudden increase in employment in 1975, 1976 and 1977 in some former homelands by comparing the long term adult physical outcomes of children benefitting from the employment increase to those not subject to it. Using a standard difference in difference approach I find that there was some malnutrition in the homelands resulting in stunting in African men born during the shock providing support to the foetal origins hypothesis. The employment shock did not affect other long term outcomes such as education and general health, although there is some evidence of an improvement in long term health. This study provides previously unmeasured individual level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid, an era when African living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection.

Performance Analysis of Cone Detection Algorithms

Many algorithms have been proposed to help clinicians evaluate cone density and spacing, as these may be related to the onset of retinal diseases. However, there has been no rigorous comparison of the performance of these algorithms. In addition, the performance of such algorithms is typically determined by comparison with human observers. Here we propose a technique to simulate realistic images of the cone mosaic. We use the simulated images to test the performance of two popular cone detection algorithms and we introduce an algorithm which is used by astronomers to detect stars in astronomical images. We use Free Response Operating Characteristic (FROC) curves to evaluate and compare the performance of the three algorithms. This allows us to optimize the performance of each algorithm. We observe that performance is significantly enhanced by up-sampling the images. We investigate the effect of noise and image quality on cone mosaic parameters estimated using the different algorithms, finding that the estimated regularity is the most sensitive parameter. This paper was published in JOSA A and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?msid=224577. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, 2 table

Firm migration patterns in in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. An end of twenty calm years of geographical interest

Firm migration in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom Cees-Jan Pen and Ilaria Mariotti In the 1970s firm migration was an important research topic in West European economic geography. Especially in the United Kingdom, but also in the Netherlands, Germany and France many migration studies are published. This paper describes a selection of these studies and proves the importance of this topic. These studies focused on assisting the in that time popular regional economic policy to support peripheral or old industrial areas by stimulating firms to move to these areas. It appeared that these policies were not very effective and the policy interest shifted to assist firms, which are located in these problem regions. Furthermore, especially in the United Kingdom the liberal policy of the Thatcher government aims at declining the governmental influence on for example firms. In a theoretical sense these policy oriented so-called behavioural firm migration studies are regarded as a repetition of (check)lists of push, pull and keep factors and interesting comments from time to time. This meant that the research interest focused on new theoretical approaches, which dealt with other themes. Since that time economic geographers regard behavioural firm migration research as a peripheral research theme, which results in hardly any theoretical contribution. So in a policy and in a scientific sense, it appears that since the 1980s the migration of firms is an insignificant topic. This implies that few studies are published and the insignificance also meant that no overview exists of the current state of the art. In a more theoretical sense, one of the authors found during the writing of his thesis international examples of a revival of the behavioural location theory and the connected firm migration research. We found signals, besides some examples of the classic interest in regional economic policy, that most of these migration studies focused on the suburbanisation of firms or in a more broad sense the urban spill-over. At the moment, this urban spill-over is an important policy topic, which pleas for data to ground this phenomenon and possibly also the significance of more long distance migration. We selected the Netherlands and the United Kingdom because these two countries produced most migration studies in Europe. Based on data of the English CREDO-database, we describe the importance and pattern of the migration of head offices in the period 1988-2000 for the United Kingdom. For the Netherlands we could only use firm migration data from 1986 until 1995. These figures are published by Kemper and Pellenbarg and are based on the so-called Mutation balance of the Chambers of Commerce. The paper mainly focuses on the comparison of firm migration process between the two countries in two different years: the 1995 for the Netherlands and the 1999 for the UK. The main results can be briefly described below. In the Netherlands 7,9% of all firms registered by the Chambers of Commerce have moved in 1995. The migration process involved 180,000 jobs. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom 3% of the business population have moved in 1999 and the amount of jobs involved was about 2,164,027. In addition, the business services are the most mobile sectors in both the countries, followed by the wholesale in the Netherlands and by the financial sector in the UK. Finally, the greater part of the firm migrations are short distance movements.

Labor Markets in South Africa During Apartheid

Conventional wisdom holds that international political pressure and domestic civil unrest in the mid-1970s and 1980s brought an end to apartheid in South Africa. I show that, prior to these events, labor market pressure in the late 1960s/early 1970s caused a dramatic unraveling of apartheid in the workplace. Increased educational attainment among whites reduced resistance to opening semi-skilled jobs to Africans. This institutional change reflected white economic preferences rather than a relaxation of attitudes toward apartheid. I show that whites benefited from the relaxation of job reservation rules and that this is the primary cause of black occupational advancement.Discrimination; Job Reservation; Education; Labor markets