2.2 An empirical analysis on selected Italian footwear districts
This section analyses the degree of international delocalisation (ID) of production of
some main footwear districts in Italy. As explained in the previous section, our selected
districts are the following: Riviera del Brenta, Verona and Treviso in Veneto; Fermano-
Maceratese in Marche; Barletta and Lecce in Puglia. We compare different districts
according to several indicators:
• the degree of ID, which we define as the percentage of outsourced production with
respect to production carried out domestically;
• the pattern of ID, which we define as the segment of the production process
outsourced by Italian firms to foreign subcontractors;
• the quality of outsourced goods with respect to the ones produced domestically,
measured with a traditional quality index;
• the relationships between ID and export performance.
Degree of ID
The degree of ID is measured by the percentage of outward processing on the total
value of goods exported for processing (Figure 1). A comparison among our selected
districts shows that Barletta registered the highest percentage of production outsourced
on the total value of production exported for processing during all the second half of the
1990s. As a result, Barletta outsourced more than 70% of its production abroad in 2000.
Within the district, firms located in Foggia clearly delocalised a much higher percentage
of production than those in Bari (over 100% and 70% respectively) (ANCI, 2001). The
other districts show much lower percentages of outsourced production: all of them but
Fermano-Maceratese outsourced less than 30% of production on the value of goods
exported for processing in 2000. There does not seem to be any clear-cut trend towards
an increase or decrease of the value of outsourced processing with respect to domestic
production, except for the Verona district, which shows a light but steady increase
during the second half of the 1990s.