After the Three Italies Wealth, Inequality and Industrial Change

by Dunford, Michael; Greco, Lidia

• ISBN13: 9781405125215
• ISBN10: 1405125217
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-23
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

After the Three Italies provides a novel synthesis of the literature on convergence and the new economic geography, and develops a new political economy approach to the analysis of the territorial division of labour. New theoretical and methodological approaches are exemplified through an up-to-date account of Italyls"s economic performance and of its recent development relative to other European countries and the rest of the world. Grounded also in the animated recent discussion of Italian development, and drawing on the results of recent ESRC-funded research, as well as on a large range of official data sets, the authors provide a new and more complex picture of Italian industrial change and regional economic performance.

Author Biography

Michael Dunford is Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Sussex. In 2000 he was elected member of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences (AcSS). In 1996-2002 he was Editor of Regional Studies. In 2003 he received the Royal Geographical Society Edward Heath Award for geographical research in Europe. He has held Visiting Professorships at the universities of Pavia, Toulouse, Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne, Campinas in Brazil, Oslo and Sciences-Po in Paris. His previous publications include Cities and Regions in the New Europe (1992) and Successful European Regions: Northern Ireland Learning from Others (1996).

Lidia Greco is Lecturer in the Sociology of Economics and Labour Processes at the University of Bari, Italy. She previously worked at Trinity College, Dublin, where she carried out two EU-funded research projects. As a consultant, Lidia has worked for the University of Durham and the Sussex European Institute, and more recently for the European Union. She is the author of Industrial Redundancies: A Comparative Analysis of the Chemical and Clothing Industries in the UK and Italy (2002) and co-author of Building the European Research Area: European Socio-Economic Research in Practice (forthcoming).

Table of Contents

List of Figures	xi
List of Tables	xiv
Series Editors' Preface	xvii
Preface and Acknowledgements	xviii
List of Abbreviations	xxiii
Introduction: Growth, Inequality and the Territorial Division of Labour	1	(16)
Areal differentiation and development models	1	(7)
After the Three Italies	8	(4)
A new economic geography of uneven development	12	(3)
The structure of the book	15	(2)
Convergence, Divergence, Regional Economic Performance and the New Economic Geographies	17	(24)
Analyzing regional economic performance	17	(3)
Convergence or divergence	20	(6)
Territorial divisions of labour	26	(13)
Conclusions	39	(2)
Theorizing Regional Economic Performance and the Changing Territorial Division of Labour: Value Chains, Industrial Networks, Competition and Governance	41	(23)
Introduction	41	(1)
Basic and nonbasic industries	42	(1)
Explaining the dynamics of activities serving wider markets	43	(7)
Enterprises and their environment: establishing the frontiers/boundaries of the firm	50	(2)
Enterprises and their environment: interfirm relations	52	(6)
Modes of governance and growth	58	(3)
Conclusions	61	(3)
Growth and Inequality: The Political Economy of Italian Development	64	(28)
Introduction	64	(1)
Italy's economy in its European and Mediterranean context	65	(5)
Official statistics, unrecorded activities and the measurement of output	70	(6)
GDP, net transfers and regional income	76	(4)
Territorial inequality in Italy at the turn of the millennium	80	(7)
Catching up, falling behind, surging ahead and losing ground: trends in Italian regional development	87	(3)
Conclusions	90	(2)
Institutional Dynamics and Regional Performance	92	(36)
Introduction	92	(1)
The Institutional configuration and the characteristics of Italian capitalism	93	(4)
Institutional context and territorial development dynamics	97	(5)
Crime and territorial development	102	(2)
Changes in the 1990s: the political scene	104	(3)
Changes in the 1990s: the system of governance	107	(4)
Changes in the 1990s: debt reduction and privatization	111	(2)
Changes in the 1990s: territorial development policies	113	(11)
Concluding remarks: the implications of recent trends	124	(4)
Italian Regional Evolutions	128	(42)
Introduction	128	(2)
Italian regional evolutions	130	(10)
Comparative regional development	140	(7)
Comparative provincial development	147	(2)
Employment, productivity and investment	149	(6)
Economic specialization, exports and international integration	155	(4)
After the Three Italies: the origins and limits of the district model	159	(10)
Conclusions	169	(1)
Industrial Change and Regional Development: The Changing Sectoral Profile of Regional Development and the Evolving Regional Profile of Industrial Change	170	(39)
Introduction	170	(1)
The sectoral profile of regional economies	170	(3)
Sectoral structures and uneven development	173	(14)
The changing geography of vehicle manufacturing in Italy and the world	187	(13)
The changing geography of chemical manufacturing in Italy and the world	200	(7)
Conclusions	207	(2)
Globalization, Industrial Restructuring and the Italian Motor Vehicle Industry	209	(35)
Introduction	209	(1)
The FIAT Group: changing functions in the value chain and changing chains	210	(6)
Globalization and market-seeking investments	216	(9)
FIAT in Italy: technological and organisational upgrading and geographies of production	225	(5)
Outsourcing, redefining corporate boundaries and restructuring the supply chain	230	(6)
Crisis, markets and models	236	(6)
Conclusions	242	(1)
Afterword	243	(1)
Reconfiguring Industrial Activities and Places: The Italian Chemical Industry	244	(38)
Introduction	244	(1)
The Italian chemical industry and its changing position in the wider European and world context	245	(7)
History and characteristics of the Italian chemical industry	252	(3)
Trajectories of restructuring	255	(7)
The role of SMEs	262	(2)
Another aspect of the new international division of labour: foreign companies in Italy	264	(2)
Experiences and regional impacts of restructuring: the disengagement of the chemical industry in Puglia	266	(5)
From growth pole to industrial cemetery: the disengagement of the chemical industry from Basilicata	271	(9)
Conclusions	280	(2)
Conclusions and Further Remarks	282	(14)
Introduction	282	(1)
Geography as a spatial expression of a social order	282	(1)
Geography and development models	283	(1)
Contemporary perspectives on industrial change and regional economic performance	284	(2)
Theorizing industrial change and regional inequality: profit strategies and value chain upgrading	286	(2)
Areal differentiation and uneven development in Italy: from the north--south divide to the Three Italies and after	288	(2)
Economic decline and the limits of the district model	290	(3)
Industrial and regional performance	293	(1)
Conclusions: inequalities, territorial divisions of labour and profit strategies	294	(2)
References	296	(16)
Notes	312	(6)
Appendices	318	(17)
Subject Index	335	(8)
Author Index	343