Building Industrial Districts: Do Subsidies Help? Evidence from Postwar Italy

Anna Spadavecchia

Business History Review, 2020, vol. 94, issue 2, 399-423

Abstract: The “historical alternatives” approach calls for research into the role of national institutions and public policies in the resilience or decline of industrial districts. Policies in support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were launched in various Western economies in the second half of the twentieth century. This article focuses on the paradigmatic Italian case and investigates the importance of government subsidies for SMEs on firms located in a southern and a northeastern district, between 1971 and 1991. This discussion deepens our understanding of the role of national policies in the reemergence of industrial districts in the decades of the Second Industrial Divide. It also indicates the importance of firms’ utilization of subsidies and their ecosystem as complementary to the policy's effectiveness.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:94:y:2020:i:2:p:399-423_6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().