The indirect effects of manufacturing internationalization on logistics - Evidence from the Italian districts

The aim of the paper is to investigate the indirect impact of internationalisation process, undertaken by the district firms located in Veneto region (north-eastern Italy), on the logistics’ employment change within the same industrial districts. The results of the empirical analysis have showed that within the districts there is not a clear positive relationship between internationalisation and the employment growth in the logistics sector. This might be due, either to a strong insourcing of logistics activities by district firms, or to a trend of outsourcing such activities to logistics suppliers located outside the industrial districts. The paper is organised into five sections. An introduction is followed by a literary review on the direct and indirect effects of manufacturing internationalisation on the home country, with a specific focus on logistics. The sample and the methodology are described in section three, section four presents the empirical results. Conclusions and further research questions follow.