Localizzazione delle imprese manifatturiere e specializzazione regionale in Italia: 1970-1990

Recently the phenomenon of firms localization has been reconsidered by the economic debate. Emphasis is given to increasing returns of localization as internal scale economies and/or as agglomeration economies. The aim of the work is that of analyzing and describing the phenomenon of localization of manufacturing industries in Italy in the last twenty years by some indicators and a panel estimate of the localization coefficients relative to 22 manufacturing industries. This in order to discriminate between the two explanations (i.e. scale economies and agglomeration economies) the one that best responds to the Italian data. The results are the following: first of all a constant, even little, reduction of concentration of manufacturing activity can be noticed, together with a productive despecialization of the regions. Secondly, the firms concentration at regional level seem to rely on economies of scale, while agglomeration economies seem to be little significant. Conversely, however, the estimates at macroregional level (North, Centre and south) show that agglomeration economies have positively influenced the firms localization in the central regions