What are the prospects of B2B electronic commerce when production is carried out by a number of small firms specialized in single production phases? Prato, Italy, is home to thousands of textile firms as well as the locus of an early and innovative experience of a local Internet in the mid-1980s. This experience suggests that, since they fear to be imatated by their geographical proximates, geographically clustered firms may lag behind in the exploitation of information and communication technologies. Analysis of today's web sites of Pratese firms confiorms this intuition. A similar analysis of web sites is carried out for producers of fabrics worldwide. Contrary to Europe, in Asian countries geographically clustered firms exhibit little fear of information leakages. Differences in the organization of production may explain this puzzle.
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Urban/Regional with number
0504008.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information F29 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Other L67 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Other Consumer Nondurables L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
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