THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF A REGION: INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS IN EMILIA-ROMAGNA

This paper studies the recent development of industrial districts in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Firstly, it shows that an identification problem still affects analysis of industrial districts, since different sources provide different definitions and maps of industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna. Comparison of the technological and the organizational features of two among the most important industrial districts in the region, the biomedical and the ceramic tile districts, offers some useful hints for identification of the sources of innovation and, in general, comparative advantage in the various location clusters. In particular, it is shown that in the case of both districts the industry of specialization benefited greatly from interaction with the industry producing specialized industrial machinery. On the basis of such hints it is then performed an econometric analysis aimed at comparing the technological strength (in terms of patents registered with the European Patent Office) of innovative firms located within and outside industrial districts. Results from panel data estimates show that being located within an industrial district resulted in a technological advantage during the overall 1986-1995 period. However, by breaking down this period into two sub-periods (1986-1990 and 1991-1995) it is found that such advantage went lost in the first half of the 1990s. The concluding section casts some doubts concerning the future and the likelihood of survival of spatially concentrated industrial districts vis-à-vis the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).