Learning from the National Manufacturing Industrial System

Abstract

The recent wave of rising protectionism and re-internationalization of capital poses a significant challenge to national industrial system that structures the network and governance firms. This work aims to analyze the global commercial network of the Italian manufacturing industry under the lenses of the network analysis, describing its peculiarities and the development and internationalization paths of its international branches. The originality of the work is also that improving the ability to analyze and manage information extracted from unstructured data (stemming from notes to the firm financial statements). An adjacency matrix created on BvD-Orbis (Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing) flagship company database. It contains information about over 12.000 large Italian companies and belonging to one or more of 17.000 different branches in 2017. In this way it was possible to understand the evolving dynamics of the sales network of the Italian branches. The results confirm that the manufacturing industry represents a significant challenge for the design of industrial policy for the national industrial system, highlighting that the structural changes in global production have aroused renewed interest in the role of this sector in promoting economic development and policy. Following this perspective, we demonstrate the relationship between the network of countries shared by Italian companies and we highlight the fundamental characteristics in the structure of intersectoral connections.