Journal Articles

The “Marco Polo” effect: Chinese FDI in Italy

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International Journal of Technology and Globalization, 4(4), 277-291 

The article is written with Carlo Pietrobelli and Marco Sanfilippo.

This study investigates the motivations driving Chinese outward direct investment to Italy. The analysis is based on secondary sources and in- depth interviews with key informants and senior managers of Chinese affiliates in Italy. The evolution of the Chinese pattern of entry in Italy confirms the pattern followed by Chinese firms in other European countries, adding some additional interesting results. Starting from small-scale operations in trade-related activities, Chinese FDI have evolved towards the acquisition of tangible and intangible resources that are deemed necessary to improve China’s presence in international markets and to upgrade their technological and production capacities.
Chinese investments in Italy are increasingly targeting the acquisition of technological capabilities and of design skills and brands to tap local competences available in specialized manufacturing clusters in sectors such as automotives and home appliances. The main industries of specialization of Chinese OFDI in Italy reflect this approach and appear to be related to China’s strategy to increase the sophistication of its exports and to move away from standardized commodities and intermediate manufactures and components.

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Persistence versus Change in the International Specialization Pattern of Italy: How much does the ‘District Effect’ matter?

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Regional Studies 45 (3), 381–401 

The paper is in collaboration with Alessia Amighini and Marinella Leone.

It investigates the evolution of specialization patterns for the Italian provinces over the period 1995-2005 by analysing the dynamics of the sectoral distribution in the Balassa index of revealed comparative advantages. The results show that underlying a relatively stable distribution of national comparative advantages over time, there are wide variations in local performance: only a few provinces demonstrate any stability in their specialization over the last decade, with the majority showing decreased specialization. We find a higher average degree of persistence for provinces with districts, but no systematic differences between provinces with or without industrial districts. District provinces show wide variation, with a few concentrating on their past comparative strengths, but many diversifying.

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Catching-up Trajectories in the Wine Sector: A Comparative Study of Chile, Italy and South Africa

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World Development 38(11): 1588-1602

The article is co-authored with Lucia Cusmano and Andrea Morrison.

From a development perspective an investigation of the changes that have occurred in the wine industry is of particular interest because it provides evidence on how emerging economies have been able to acquire significant shares of the international market in a dynamic sector. Based on novel empirical evidence, this paper shows that emerging countries with diverse institutional models and innovation strategies have actively participated in the process of technological modernization and product standardization. These newcomers in the wine sector have responded particularly effectively to changes in demand, aligning emerging scientific approaches with institutional building efforts and successful marketing strategies.

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Why do researchers collaborate with industry? An analysis of the wine sector in Chile, Italy and South Africa

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Research Policy, 39(6): 748-761

The paper is in collaboration with Elisa Giuliani, Andrea Morrison and Carlo Pietrobelli.

Research on University-Industry (U-I) linkages and their determinants has increased significantly in the past few years. However, there is still controversy on the key factors explaining the formation of U-I linkages, and especially related to individual researcher characteristics. This paper provides new empirical evidence and, in particular, looks at the importance of researchers’ individual characteristics and their institutional environments in explaining the propensity to engage in different types of U-I linkages. Based on an original dataset, we present new evidence on three wine producing areas – Piedmont, a region of Italy, Chile and South Africa – that have successfully responded to recent structural changes in the industry worldwide. Empirical findings reveal that researchers’ individual characteristics, such as centrality in the academic system, age and sex, matter more than publishing records or formal degrees. Institutional specificities at country level also play a role in shaping the propensity of researchers to engage with industry.

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Outward FDI from developing countries MNEs as a channel for technological catch-up

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Seoul Journal of Economics, 23(2): 239-261

The paper is in collaboration with Alessia Amighini and Marco Sanfilippo.

One of the more recent aspects of the globalization process is the rise and the increasing outward expansion of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developing countries. Among the more promising effects of this phenomenon is a potentially positive development impact: through outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) developing country MNEs acquire new knowledge, which contributes to the technological catch-up of their home countries. This paper reviews the recent literature on OFDI from developing countries, with a critical focus on the theory and evidence of FDI as a channel for technological catch-up. This literature suggests that the features and global business environment of current emerging country MNEs is different from those of latecomer firms in earlier decades. Modularity of production in an increasing number of sectors, combined with weak national innovation systems (NIS) in many developing countries explain why the sourcing of strategic assets – including technology and innovation – from abroad through OFDI has become such an important channel for technological catch-up.

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Knowledge and information networks in an Italian wine cluster

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European and Planning Studies, 17(7): 983-1006

The paper is in collaboration with Andrea Morrison.

The aim is to analyse the nature and extent of knowledge and information networks in an Italian wine cluster. Moreover, the relation between firms’ characteristics and the knowledge network structure is also explored. The empirical findings show that knowledge is unevenly distributed in clusters and that networks of knowledge and information differ a great deal in terms of their structure. In fact, knowledge flows are restricted to a tightly connected community of local producers, differing in terms of knowledge assets, innovation behaviour and overall economic performance with respect to the rest of the firms in the cluster.

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Italian SMEs and Industrial Districts on the move: where are they going?

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European and Planning Studies, 17(1): 19-41

The paper is co-authored with Anna Carabelli and Giovanna Hirsch.

Since the second half of the 1990s the Italian economy has experienced a significant slowdown in the rate of economic growth. The ‘dwarfism’ of its manufacturing firms, their specialisation in traditional sectors and their organisation in industrial districts have been identified by many scholars as major structural weaknesses in the Italian industrial system. Nevertheless, there is a vast and flourishing empirical literature showing that many industrial districts are actually changing in terms of sector specialisation, international and innovation strategies and emergence of new forms of enterprise organisation. In this paper, we provide a critical survey of the new and different patterns of industrial organisation emerging in industrial districts.

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Global Value Chains and Technological Capabilities: A Framework to Study Industrial Innovation in Developing Countries

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Oxford Development Studies, 36(1): 39-58

The paper is co-authored with Andrea Morrison and Carlo Pietrobelli.

It presents a critical review of the Global Value Chain literature in light of the “Technological Capabilities” approach to innovation in LDCs. Participation in GVC is beneficial for firms in LDCs, which are bound to source technology internationally. However, the issues of learning and technological efforts at the firm-level remain largely uncovered by the GVC literature.
We propose a shift in the empirical and theoretical agenda, arguing that research should integrate the analysis of the endogenous process of technological capability development, of the specific firm-level efforts and of the mechanisms allowing knowledge to flow within and between different global value chains into the GVC literature.

ICTs in Industrial Districts: An Empirical Analysis on Adoption, Use and Impact in the Biella Textile District

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Industry and Innovation, 14(3): 277-303

The paper is in collaboration with Tommaso Ciarli.

The aim of this study is to analyse the main determinants of the adoption and use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and the relationship between ICT and the patterns of innovation in an Italian industrial district. The analysis is carried out on a database of 118 textile enterprises located in Biella, a well known industrial district specialised in medium to high quality woollen yarns and textiles, which have been interviewed following a structured questionnaire.
On the whole, the rate of adoption and use of ICT in Biella is rather low, confirming the results of other studies on industrial districts specialised in traditional sectors. Nevertheless, our analysis also shows that considering ICT as a general technology may be misleading. It is instead useful to disentangle among different ICT; in particular, there are significant differences between IT involving production, administration and logistic processes and communication technologies (CT). Moreover, we have tested on a smaller sample of 50 firms the hypothesis that adoption and use of ICT may positively influence innovation. Here, the most interesting finding is that different types of innovations, i.e. product, process and organisational innovations, are influenced by very different variables.

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The Role of Research in Wine: the Emergence of a Regional Research Area in an Italian Wine Production System

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International Journal of Technology and Globalization 3(2/3): 155- 178

The article is written in collaboration with Andrea Morrison.

In recent years, the wine industry has undergone a radical technological modernisation in which scientific research has become extremely prominent. Focusing on a regional research system related to wine, we provide a detailed account of the structural features of the research and extension institutions in the Piedmont region and how they interact. The empirical analysis is based on detailed interviews with people from research centres, universities, extension agencies as well as on a database of research projects on topics relevant to the wine industry. Social network analysis is employed to describe the structural properties of the networks that have been established among universities, research and business organisations and firms, as a result of these projects. Based on these two data sources we provide a detailed picture of the actors, linkages and processes underpinning the regional wine research system.

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Business Development Service Centres in Italy: close to firms far from innovation

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World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 4(1): 38-55 

The article is co-authored with Carlo Pietrobelli.

The notion of ‘Business Development Service’ (BDS) is quickly gaining popularity among policy makers and scholars of management, industrial organization and development. Similarly, attention is increasingly paid to the institutions and centers offering BDS, as an essential part of the ‘local’ or ‘regional innovation system’. The paper analyses the experience of BDS Centres in three highly developed Italian regions, Emilia Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto, and evaluates their performance and contribution to the regional industrial, and notably SME, development. The paper is based on a survey of 30 BDS Centres and it uses quantitative together with qualitative evidence.

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The effects of globalization on Italian industrial districts: Evidence from the footwear sector

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European Planning Studies, 14(4): 485-502

This paper is in collaboration with Alessia Amighini.

It examines the impact of globalisation of production on the Italian footwear sector and investigates the structural changes taking place in some shoe districts as they join international production networks.
The following questions are discussed: Are Italian footwear districts specialising in particular phases of the production cycle? Is there a trend towards the reduction of activities carried out within districts? Or are different patterns emerging according to the districts’ main market segment and to the value chains (e.g. luxury fashion market or mass market) they belong to?
The study explores these issues using data on outward processing trade (OPT) collected by Associazione Nazionale Calzaturieri Italiani (ANCI) to analyse the fragmentation of production in the footwear sector at “provincia” level. The available disaggregation of data allows us to investigate the different outsourcing strategies and emerging trends within the district. Two case studies are presented; one on Riviera del Brenta in Veneto and the other on Barletta in Puglia.
In the footwear districts investigated, we find evidence of different international delocalisation strategies. We argue that these different patterns of specialisation are closely related to the clusters’ market position and suggest that these patterns influence the clusters’ potential for future competitiveness.

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