1. INTRODUCTION
The Marshallian industrial district and its subsequent rediscovery and
theorization by Italian scholars (Becattini 1991; Brusco 1975) has generated a
huge amount of literature for or against its importance as an analytical
category, as a central piece in the theories of local development, and as a
break from the traditional economic paradigm since it proposes a new way of
interpreting economic change at the very heart of the local society, where
economic forces interact and evolve.
Several theories in economic literature pose obstacles to the
acceptance of industrial districts as economically efficient entities. They
include the initial criticisms to the existence of external economies (Sraffa
1926), the principle of asymmetry between small and large firms (Steindl
1945) or the dominance of large monopolistic firms as the best innovators
(Schumpeter 1942). Recent criticisms has questioned the efficiency of
industrial districts or argued that this efficiency is static and based on lower
costs due to over-exploitation of hired labour, self-exploitation of small
entrepreneurs and precarious living conditions whereas the district is not
innovative or creative enough to generate dynamic efficiency)1.
Most of these criticisms were overcome by the studies dealing with
the “district effect”, which proved the static efficiency of the industrial
district regarding higher productivity and lower inefficiency (Signorini 1994;
Fabianini et al. 2000), and dynamic efficiency in terms of competitiveness
(Gola and Mori 2000; Bronzini 2000) or innovation (Brusco 1975), even if
there were objections to the results regarding the use of particular case
studies and truncated datasets (Staber 1997).
Boix and Galletto (2008a) provided additional evidence for the study
of dynamic efficiency in industrial districts and local production systems
(LPS) by centring their research on the “innovation district effect” (I-district
effect). The I-district effect hypothesis establishes the existence of highly
intense innovation in industrial districts due to Marshallian external
localization economies. The authors proved that industrial districts were the
most innovative local production systems (LPS) in Spain as they innovative
output per capita that is 47% above the national average and produce 31% of
Spanish patents.
Although in Boix and Galletto (2008a) a highly detailed patent
database is used and the results are compared with other periods and
indicators, the possibility of an “industry-effect” in addition to the territorial
explanation is not taken into account. Since industrial districts are
characterized by specific manufacturing specializations, is the I-district effect
really related to the conditions of the territory or to the industrial
1 They are synthesized and counter- argued by Becattini and Musotti 2004.