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



Table 1 - Manufacturing business groups by class of employees and number of companies

Class of
employees

Number of companies in the group

2

3

4

5

6-9

10-

19

20-

49

50-

99

>99

Total

"Γ-9

1115

181

16

7

3

1322

10-19

1050

269

51

9

6

1385

20-49

1829

569

154

52

35

11

1

2651

50-99

960

480

200

70

64

11

4

1789

100-249

685

412

223

115

119

28

12

1

1595

250-499

172

134

106

54

109

47

6

5

1

634

500-999

64

47

36

31

77

45

14

2

2

318

> 999

35

29

21

20

50

53

34

8

10

260

Total_____

5910

2121

807

358

463

195

71

16

13

9954

4. The empirical evidence

Now let us illustrate our empirical findings. The first result concerns the presence of
business groups within Italian industrial districts. Our evidence tends to give an empirical
validation of Proposition 1, i.e. that business groups are more widespread in industrial
districts than outside them. This hypothesis is generally confirmed when we consider the
firms (columns 1 and 2 of Table 2 and 3), but not always when we consider the share of
employees (columns 3 and 4 of Table 2 and 4). In particular, columns 1 and 2 of Table 2
suggest that passing from non-district to district LLSs the share of firms belonging to
business groups tends to increase. This finding appears to be reinforced when we take into
account only firms specialized in the district sector. In fact, in this case the share of firms
belonging to business groups is higher than in the two previous cases. The greater
incidence of business groups within the Italian industrial districts is further confirmed by
Table 3, where the analysis takes into account industrial districts by sector of activity.

11



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