Industrial districts, urban areas or both? The location behaviour of foreign and domestic firms in an Italian manufacturing region

The present paper aims to investigate the location behaviour of manufacturing firms, according to their ownership: domestic firms (henceforth, DOMs) and inward FDIs (henceforth, IFDIs). This issue is empirically investigated by using data on manufacturing IFDIs and on DOMs in Veneto (North-East of Italy) from the Reprint, AIDA and ISTAT databases. Veneto is an industrial district region, specialized in the Made in Italy sectors, hosting a central metropolitan area (Padua), and attracting a high share of IFDIs. Geo-referenced mapping and econometric analysis (counterfactual) are developed to explore the location behaviour of the two groups of firms. In line with previous works, findings show that IFDIs are more willing to be located in areas close to the main urban centres as the metropolitan area of Padua, to exploit the advantages of complex environments and higher connectivity. However, they also tend to locate in district areas more often that their DOMs counterfactual, suggesting their objective of acquiring a system of specialized productive knowledge and skills grown within district ecosystem, and that are hardly reproducible in other contexts.