Things change. Foreign market penetration and firms’ behaviour in industrial districts: an empirical analysis

With the introduction of information and communication technology, a brisker pace in market integration and the adoption of a fixed exchange rate, some changes seem to have occurred in the determinants of Italian industrial districts firms' competitive advantages. In this paper we use the overall degree of foreign market penetration as a performance variable and estimate which are its determinants in two different periods, 1997 and 2000, using a sample of 707 manufacturing firms located in industrial districts. The results of our ordered probit analyses suggest that indeed some “traditional” determinants are losing their relative weight, while new ones are gaining the scene.