Until recently, economists studying economic development have tended to consider it a universal process, or focussed their attention on common aspects. This book originates from the growing recognition of significant sectoral differences in economic development and examines the catching-up...

Aim of this paper is to explore the main drivers of outsourcing of knowledge intensive business services by Italian manufacturing firms. While anecdotal and empirical evidence has emphasized labour cost and scale economies as behind firms' choices to outsource production or service activities,...