The innovation-trade nexus: Italy in historical perspective (1861-1939)

Giacomo Domini ()
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Giacomo Domini: UNU-MERIT, and Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena

No 2015-055, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This work investigates the relationship between trade and technological specialisation in Italy, during the long time span ranging from Unification to the eve of the Second World War. To do this, new series of Italy's indices of specialisation in trade and technology are calculated on the base of offcial data. Empirical analysis, based on Spearman rank correlation coefficients and fixed-effects regression, shows the emergence of a positive relationship between specialisation in technology and specialisation in trade after the start of the country's modern economic growth, around the turn of the twentieth century. This, however, was uniquely driven by a negative relationship between technological specialisation and import shares, while no significant relationship between the former and export shares emerges. Furthermore, this finding excludes the most important sector, leading Italian industrialisation, i.e. textiles, the outstanding performance of which can be seen as largely determined by its being particularly suited to the country's factor endowment.

Keywords: innovation; industrial specialization; trade; import-export; economic history; Italy; specialisation; comparative advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N73 N74 O14 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-int
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2015055

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