Environmental impact and innovation in industrial districts

The impact of environmental policies on industrial activities has been studied mainly with regard to specific industrial sectors, e.g. chemical industries, and specific ‘sectoral’ environmental problems and policies, e.g. regulations on water pollution. Instead, the impact of environmental policies on spatially-concentrated systems of (small) industrial firms has received minor attention so far. In this work, we look at the experience of the Italian IDs to explore the possibility that industrial responses to environmental policies may assume specific features in ID-like economic ‘environments’.