Italian industrial districts: Facts and theories

Abstract

It is not difficult to understand why Italian industrial districts have been one of the most popular and debated issues both in economics and other fields over the last two decades. The scenario, reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution, astonished everyone in the 70s, when the phenomenon began, or, rather, became conspicuous. Interest was aroused not only in Italy, due to the close proximity of the the phenomenon but also in other places, because it challenged prevailing economic thought and opened up new horizons for economic policy. It is only natural that the topic of industrial districts has generated a flood of literature since then, but libelli habent sua fata. Scientific speculation sometimes poses no lesser problems than reality itself. With the advantage of the hindsight, one is led to suspect that speculation may have superseded observation, and may eventually have created a virtual ersatz of a reality which was (and is) in itself fascinating, but riddled with problems. In this work, I will try to separate those, which, in my view, are the original facts from the theoretical elaborations which followed, and to offer some comments about the latter.