IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa04p402.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Spatial agglomeration and business groups: new evidence from Italian industrial districts

Author

Listed:
  • Giulio Cainelli
  • Donato Iacobucci
  • Enrica Morganti

Abstract

This paper is a first attempt to analyse the relationship between spatial agglomeration and firmsÂ’ organizational structures. It takes advantage of a large data set on Italian business groups that allowed us to analyse the differences in the presence and characteristics of business groups between districts and non district areas. Overall the result confirms the hypothesis that spatial agglomeration of business activities influences firmsÂ’ organization. Groups are more widespread in industrial districts than in non-district areas; moreover groups in industrial districts are less diversified and more spatially concentrated than groups outside industrial districts. Key words: business groups, industrial districts, spatial agglomeration, firmÂ’s organizational forms JEL Classification: L22, R12

Suggested Citation

  • Giulio Cainelli & Donato Iacobucci & Enrica Morganti, 2004. "Spatial agglomeration and business groups: new evidence from Italian industrial districts," ERSA conference papers ersa04p402, European Regional Science Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p402
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa04/PDF/402.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2004. "Micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 48, pages 2063-2117, Elsevier.
    2. Lazerson, Mark H & Lorenzoni, Gianni, 1999. "The Firms That Feed Industrial Districts: A Return to the Italian," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 8(2), pages 235-266, June.
    3. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    4. Valeriano Balloni & Donato Iacobucci, 2001. "I "nuovi protagonisti" dell'industria italiana," L'industria, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 4, pages 633-676.
    5. Gabi Dei Ottati, 2002. "Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 449-466, June.
    6. Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-1152, December.
      • Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991. "Growth in Cities," NBER Working Papers 3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Kallal, Hedi D. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Scholarly Articles 3451309, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Francesco Brioschi & Maria Sole Brioschi & Giulio Cainelli, 2002. "From the industrial district to the district group: An insight into the evolution of capitalism in italy1," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 1037-1052.
    8. Boari, Cristina & Odorici, Vincenza & Zamarian, Marco, 2003. "Clusters and rivalry: does localization really matter?," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 467-489, December.
    9. Giulio Cainelli & Riccardo Leoncini, 1999. "Externalities and long-term local industrial development. Some empirical evidence from Italy," Revue d'Économie Industrielle, Programme National Persée, vol. 90(1), pages 25-39.
    10. David J. Teece & Richard Rumelt & Giovanni Dosi & Sidney Winter, 2000. "Understanding Corporate Coherence: Theory and Evidence," Chapters, in: Innovation, Organization and Economic Dynamics, chapter 9, pages 264-293, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Ron A. Boschma & Jan G. Lambooy, 2002. "Knowledge, Market Structure, and Economic Coordination: Dynamics of Industrial Districts," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 291-311.
    12. Donato Iacobucci, 2002. "Explaining business groups started by habitual entrepreneurs in the Italian manufacturing sector," Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 31-47, January.
    13. Donato Iacobucci & Peter Rosa, 2005. "Growth, Diversification, and Business Group Formation in Entrepreneurial Firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 65-82, August.
    14. Fabio Nun & Giulio Caineilli, 1996. "Changing directions in Italy's manufacturing industrial districts," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(2), pages 105-118.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giulio Cainelli & Donato Iacobucci, 2006. "The Role of Agglomeration and Technology in Shaping Firm's Strategy and Organization," ERSA conference papers ersa06p286, European Regional Science Association.
    2. Cainelli, Giulio & Iacobucci, Donato, 2006. "The Role of Agglomeration and Technology in Shaping Firm Strategy and Organization," Knowledge, Technology, Human Capital Working Papers 12091, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    3. Giulio Cainelli & Donato Iacobucci, 2012. "Agglomeration, Related Variety, and Vertical Integration," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 88(3), pages 255-277, July.
    4. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    5. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    6. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    7. David C. Maré & Jason Timmins, 2006. "Geographic concentration and firm productivity," Working Papers 06_08, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    8. Tubiana, Matteo & Miguelez, Ernest & Moreno, Rosina, 2022. "In knowledge we trust: Learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1).
    9. Enrico Guzzini & Donato Iacobucci, 2012. "Firm size and unrelated diversification. An empirical test on the ‘survivalist hypothesis’," Working Papers 1207, c.MET-05 - Centro Interuniversitario di Economia Applicata alle Politiche per L'industria, lo Sviluppo locale e l'Internazionalizzazione.
    10. Michael Storper, 2010. "Why Does a City Grow? Specialisation, Human Capital or Institutions?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(10), pages 2027-2050, September.
    11. Peter Mayerhofer & Oliver Fritz, 2013. "Wiens Stadtwirtschaft. Internationale Spezialisierungschancen, zentrale Wirtschaftsbereiche," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 57933, April.
    12. Niccolò Innocenti & Luciana Lazzeretti, 2018. "Relatedness and growth: The impact of creative industries to the wider economy," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1819, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Apr 2018.
    13. Koster, Hans R.A. & Ozgen, Ceren, 2021. "Cities and tasks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    14. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissensintensive Unternehmensdienste, Wissens-Spillovers und regionales Wachstum. Teilprojekt 1: Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung – Welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert das Wach," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58342, April.
    15. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Gobillon, Laurent, 2015. "The Empirics of Agglomeration Economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 247-348, Elsevier.
    16. Olof Ejermo, 2005. "Technological Diversity and Jacobs’ Externality Hypothesis Revisited," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 167-195, June.
    17. Iammarino, Simona & McCann, Philip, 2006. "The structure and evolution of industrial clusters: Transactions, technology and knowledge spillovers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1018-1036, September.
    18. Amezcua, Alejandro & Ratinho, Tiago & Plummer, Lawrence A. & Jayamohan, Parvathi, 2020. "Organizational sponsorship and the economics of place: How regional urbanization and localization shape incubator outcomes," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(4).
    19. Javier Changoluisa, 2021. "The early development of new establishments: An evaluation of the role of spatial selection and agglomeration," Jena Economics Research Papers 2021-009, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    20. Ajay Agarwal & Genevieve Giuliano & Christian Redfearn, 2012. "Strangers in our midst: the usefulness of exploring polycentricity," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 433-450, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    business groups; industrial districts; spatial agglomeration; firmâ’s organizational forms jel classification: l22; r12;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p402. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.