The indirect effects of manufacturing internationalisation on logistics. A focus on the industrial districts of Veneto

The internationalisation of production has a strong impact on the logistics sector because it increases the flows of goods to be moved and warehousing activities, thus leading to a more complex logistics system. The aim of the article is to investigate the effects of internationalisation, undertaken by the industrial district firms located in Veneto region (North-Eastern Italy) in 1996–2001, on the employment change which has occurred in the logistics companies located in the same industrial districts in 1996–2003. The results of the empirical analysis show that the majority of the internationalised industrial districts present an employment growth in the logistics sector, nevertheless, there is not a clear positive relationship between internationalisation, measured in terms of number of workers in foreign affiliates, and the employment growth in the logistics sector. This might be due to an insourcing of the greater part of logistics activities by district firms and/or by a tendency to outsource these services to logistics suppliers located outside the industrial districts.