Italian Industrial Districts: An Industrial Economics Interpretation

The Italian debate on industrial districts suggests that local development can be based on small and medium-sized firms, provided they work in teams and are embedded in a local system of social relations. If the availability of local public goods complements the private supply of local specialized services and goods, Marshallian external economies are engendered. When inner social and economic relations boost the supply of local public goods, and are reproduced by the consistent economic behaviour of local (economic and political) agents, they become local factors of economic development, or, in other words, the district's social capital. These propositions are considered within a three-layered framework comprising structure, conduct and performance. The relations among these levels allow joint consideration of three different processes of economic selection: competitive, strategic, evolutionary. This complexity is necessary if the conditions that foster significant Marshallian external economies are to be represented correctly.     

Economic Governance and the Evolution of Industrial Districts Under Globalization: The Case of Two Mature European Industrial Districts

For many mature European industrial districts, the present decade has been one of trying (and often failing) to meet the difficult challenges posed by the rising tide of globalization. The future of these districts in the new global economy has become a key issue for regional and local development policy, and, in this respect, it has sparked a renewed interest in economic governance. Economic governance is important in that it underpins a region's long-term economic development path. This article is a contribution to the study of the economic governance of industrial districts and the related policy debate. The article does so by specifically exploring the economic governance issue by considering the experiences and challenges currently facing two mature European industrial districts in the global economy.     

Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts

It is often believed that industrial districts result from an entirely spontaneous process of economic development. On the basis of in-depth study of several Italian industrial districts, in this paper it is argued that the competitiveness and the dynamism of industrial districts' firms are dependent from social integration. Social integration, however, is usually the result of a conscious co-ordination among the local institutions: i.e. the 'high road' to competitiveness is not the outcome of market mechanism, but of a combination of market and concerted collective action among the representatives of the principal district categories and the local establishment.     

意大利工业区与华人的双重挑战

论文分析了全球性竞争压力对工业区适应机制的影响及工业区的竞争优势以及工业区内部形成的华人经济的潜在威胁,探讨了在新的条件下将这种威胁转化为新的发展机遇的可能性。认为华人经济的特殊优势使华人企业越来越活跃,但却使当地企业日益萎缩。这反过来又促使当地经济整体进行转型;华人企业家的某些优势在于其跨地区和跨国网络;华人移民对其祖籍国潜在商业伙伴的能力和品德有深度了解,如果能发挥中介作用,意大利当地企业就能使其工业生产及产品销售国际化。     

Global Value Chains and Open Networks: The Case of Italian Industrial Districts

Italian district small and medium enterprises (SMEs) developed aggressive strategies to extend their sales networks and supply chains abroad. Literature on districts offered alternative explanations about the impacts of internationalization on local manufacturing systems. The authors consider the evolution of Italian districts in the framework of global value chain approach, focusing on the role of leading firms. Based on a survey of 650 Italian SMEs and financial indicators, the paper describes the rise of a new district firm model, the open network, which becomes a key node of global value chains. The paper also analyses the relationships among internationalization, innovation strategies and performance of SMEs.     

Differences in Survival Strategies among Footwear Industrial Districts: The Role of International Outsourcing

During the 1990s, a further development of the industrial district model was observed in some developed countries and industrial sectors. Due to the intense process of globalization, footwear district firms have gradually relocated some manufacturing activities through an international extension of their business networks. In this manner, the traditional pattern of integrated shoemaking is being replaced by a global supply chain stretching across different countries and cultures. Even though Spain has always been positioned at the top of the rank of footwear exporters, little attention has been paid to how Spanish footwear districts are handling the global competition and strategies implemented in order to achieve superior efficiency rates. This paper attempts to describe the international outsourcing activities (one of the most expanded strategies) in four footwear industrial districts. To reach our objective, data about imports of components and outward processing trade in provinces of the districts considered are deeply analysed. Special consideration has been paid to differences between provinces and districts. Finally, based on the issues reviewed and results obtained in previous sections, our paper includes conclusions and implications for policy makers and practitioners.     

浅析新石器时代生产工具中的“仪式用斧”问题——兼论生产工具功能的分化

石铲和石钺在我国新石器时代之初是较为普遍的生产工具,后来随着社会经济的发展和原始宗教力量的增强,部分石铲和石钺逐渐从生产工具中分化出来,制作日益精美,有的器表还刻有纹饰,成为祭祀或是宗教活动中的仪式用品。本文以石铲和石钺为例对新石器时代生产工具中的仪式用斧现象略作探讨。     

Developing FTIR Microspectroscopy for the Analysis of Animal-Tissue Residues on Stone Tools

The analysis of microscopic residues on stone tools provides one of the most direct ways to reconstruct the functions of such artifacts. However, new methods are needed to strengthen residue identifications based upon visible-light microscopy. In this work, we establish that reflectance Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIRM) can be used to document IR spectra of animal-tissue residues on experimental stone tools. First, we present a set of reflectance FTIRM standards for the most commonly identified animal-tissue residues on stone tools: skin, meat, fat, hair, blood, feather barbules, fish scales, and bone. We provide spectral peak assignments for each residue and demonstrate that high-quality reflectance FTIRM spectra can be generated under ideal circumstances. Second, we document the spectra for these residues when they are located on a stone substrate such as flint or obsidian. We discuss procedures for correcting spectra that are affected by specular reflection and explain the effects of spectral interference from the stone. Our results show that reflectance FTIRM is sensitive to small intra-sample differences in composition. This means that it will record the effects of decomposition in ancient residues. The methodological developments we present here will help lithic residue analysts incorporate in situ reflectance FTIRM into their analysis protocols to strengthen identifications.     

Thematic Portals: Tools for Research and Making the Archival Heritage Known

Abstract

The authors explain how the newly created thematic portals can be used to facilitate digital research in Italian state archives.     

Implementing Spatial Data Analysis Software Tools in R

This article reports on work in progress on the implementation of functions for spatial statistical analysis, in particular of lattice/area data in the R language environment. The underlying spatial weights matrix classes, as well as methods for deriving them from data from commonly used geographical information systems are presented, handled using other contributed R packages. Since the initial release of some functions in 2001, and the release of the spdep package in 2002, experience has been gained in the use of various functions. The topics covered are the ingestion of positional data, exploratory data analysis of positional, attribute, and neighborhood data, and hypothesis testing of autocorrelation for univariate data. It also provides information about community building in using R for analyzing spatial data.     

Three Tools for Forecasting Federal Elections: Lessons from 2001

What is the best way to predict Australian federal election results? This article analyses three forecasting tools: opinion polls, economic models, and betting odds. Historically, we find that opinion polls taken close to the election are quite accurate, while economic models provide better medium-run forecasts. The November 2001 federal election largely follows this pattern, although the economic models provided more accurate projections than recorded through the 1990s. Against these, we compare betting odds, analysing a rich data source from one of Australia's largest bookmakers, Centrebet. The betting market not only correctly forecast the election outcome, but also provided very precise estimates of outcomes in a host of individual electorates. Betting fluctuations present an intriguing quantitative record of the shifting fortunes of the campaign. Particularly in marginal seats, the press may have better served its readers by reporting betting odds than by conducting polls. We conclude that the results of these three models can help determine how important the events of August and September 2001 were in deciding the outcome of the election.     

Contexts for Conflict: Conceptual Tools for Interpreting Archaeological Reflections of Warfare

Abstract

There has been a long history of interest in the material remains of conflict, but in the last two and a half decades archaeologists have made strides in the study of war and warfare. Techniques have been developed, refined, and borrowed to expose the material record of combat. Sites associated with other military undertakings have been discovered and the material culture of conflict has been documented. This growth has expanded an understanding of past conflicts and challenged previously held ideas about warfare. Although archaeologists do not currently have interpretive frameworks to link the diverse sites and objects that form the archaeological record of war, modern military planners have developed such models. This paper uses sites from the North American Great Plains to suggest that military models of conflict analysis can contribute to a synthetic archaeological interpretation of conflict.     

Sticks and Stones: Environmental Narratives and Discursive Regulation in the Forestry and Mining Sectors

As visibly extractive industries reliant on the material and semiotic commodification of nature, forestry and mining have come to be popularly viewed as "environmental pariahs." Yet forestry and mining continue to be successfully profitable enterprises despite a significant increase in environmental awareness and activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. To understand the relative stability and growth of these sectors in the face of overt contradictions arising from their use of the environment, this article revisits the work of regulation theorists who asked similar questions about the persistence and maintenance of capitalism in general.
Two case studies are presented–forestry in British Columbia and gold mining in California and Nevada–which demonstrate how the political economy of forestry and mining is subject to contradictions arising out of the technological and organizational mechanisms through which nature is appropriated during production. Analysis of the case studies shows that the regulation of these contradictions is increasingly achieved through the deployment and cooptation of sustainability narratives. The case studies therefore juxtapose the recent proliferation of sustainability narratives within the forestry and mining sectors with the sectors' persistent challenge to concepts of sustainable development.     

Tools for Reordering: Commonplacing and the Space of Words in Linnaeus's Philosophia Botanica

While much has been written on the cultural and intellectual antecedents that gave rise to Carolus Linnaeus’s herbarium and his Systema Naturae, the tools that he used to transform his raw observations into nomenclatural terms and categories have been neglected. Focusing on the Philosophia Botanica, the popular classification handbook that he published in 1751, it can be shown that Linnaeus cleverly ordered and reordered the work by employing commonplacing techniques that had been part of print culture since the Renaissance. Indeed, the functional adaptability of commonplace heads allowed him to split and combine the book’s chapters and tables and played a notable conceptual role in the way in which he spatialized words and, to a certain extent, specimens.     

Business Improvement Districts and the Discourse of Contractualism

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are increasingly being advanced in a range of national contexts as a new delivery mechanism for securing improvement, regeneration and enhanced service delivery in specifically delineated districts. This paper considers BIDs as an example of a modern institutional design that is reconfiguring existing economic and legal regimes within town centres. Drawing on the theories of new institutional economics and transaction costs, the paper discusses how the contractual turn in urban governance advances our conceptual understanding of the rationale, scope and significance of partnership working. The discussion brings together emerging literatures around new ways of understanding partnership working in government thinking. It contrasts the advocacy and use of BIDs with the (previously established) practices of town centre management. It asserts that BIDs represent a new form of formalized and contractualized partnership working in sub-municipal governance, which has particular spatio-temporal implications for state–market–civil relations.