The clearest expressions of Marshallian external economies are found in the life and working of compact industrial districts. However Alfred Marshall did not limit their application to such types of places, nor to their territorial scale. This paper illustrates some important extensions found in Marshall’s works, particularly in Industry and Trade, concerning firstly the advantages accruing to industrial districts within larger industrial regions and national contexts. The concept of a national capital including technical, human and social resources, or of a “Marshallian capital” as Silvio Goglio proposed to call it, plays a pivotal role in suggesting both the common nature of the different expressions and scales of Marshallian external economies, and the possible interrelation between them. Processes and conditions associated by Marshall to either non place-bound or distant trans-local contexts of external economies are considered too. An implicit and open multi-territorial framework emerges. Some of its different meanings are discussed in the conclusions of this paper with the help of interpreta-tions of industrial districts, regions, nations, and global networks developed after Mar-shall, starting from those of Austin Robinson and Giacomo Becattini.
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Paper provided by Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche in its series Working Papers Series with number
wp2009_13.rdf.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Capital and Total Factor Productivity; Capacity R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography) B10 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - General
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