La ripresa delle esportazioni italiane a partire dalla seconda metà del 2006 è congiunturale o è il risultato di un processo strutturale che sta mutando le caratteristiche del sistema produttivo italiano? Questo volume mostra come diversi settori siano riusciti ad aumentare le proprie quote nel mercato mondiale: ciò riguarda tanto attività tradizionali del made in Italy quanto attività tecnologicamente più avanzate. Una ripresa, riconducibile soprattutto ai processi di ristrutturazione avvenuti a livello di impresa, piuttosto che alla nostra specializzazione settoriale. E' dunque necessario creare le condizioni di contesto per favorire la crescita delle imprese più efficienti. La ristrutturazione richiederà una forte mobilità delle risorse, in particolare del lavoro. Un processo non indolore, i cui costi sociali possano essere ridotti mediante la riforma dei sussidi di disoccupazione, la creazione di una rete di protezione di ultima istanza e di un nuovo contratto di lavoro a tempo indeterminato che permetta di rispondere alle esigenze di flessibilità delle imprese senza creare disparità nel mercato del lavoro.

Is Italy changing?

In the introductory essay of this book, Richard Baldwin argues that globalization has entered a new phase. The main difference with respect to the past is that globalization is occurring at a much finer level of disaggregation. Due to radical reductions in international communication and coordination costs, Eu firms can now offshore many tasks that were previously considered non-tradeable. This means that international competition – which used to be primarily between firms and sectors in different nations – now occurs between individual workers performing similar tasks in different nations. The really new feature is that new globalization processes will seem quite unpredictable from the perspective of firms and sectors. Since individual tasks can be offshored, globalization may help some workers in a given firm while harming others. Moreover, the traditional skill bias in winners and losers of old time globalization breaks down. Certain highly skilled tasks may turn out to be offshore-able, while other highly skilled tasks are not. Increased offshoring will therefore not systematically help or hurt skilled workers in the Eu. In particular, many «Information Society» jobs are prone to offshoring, so Eu policies aimed at moving workers into Information Society jobs may be wasted since those jobs are only «good jobs» because they do not yet face direct international competition. Baldwin argues that this has important implications for the Eu’s competitiveness strategy, education strategy, welfare states, and industrial policy. The underlying theme is that the increased unpredictability should make Eu leaders more cautious about moving workers or skills in a particular direction. Flexibility is, as always, the key to allowing Europe to seize the opportunities of globalization while minimizing the adjustment costs.

The following essay focuses on the Italian context. Giorgio Barba Navaretti and colleagues explain the reasons for the recent growth of Italian exports during the second half of 2006, reversing a decade long declining trend. Their research aims at understanding whether this pattern only reflect short term factors or, rather, it is the outcome of a process of «creative destruction» which is changing the structure of the Italian productive system. The focus is on firms, trying to understand what factors have affected their export performance, rather than on industries.

Their results are somehow in line with Baldwin’s, in that sectoral patterns have limited power in explaining the export performance of Italy. There is evidence of successful firms also in industries facing tough competition from cheap labour countries, as far as in high tech sectors. These firms, successful exporters, though, have some features in common. The rate of growth of exports has been higher for relatively large firms, endowed with a high share of human capital, using more advanced technologies and investing heavily in Itc. Moreover, most of the exports seem to originate from firms which export a large share of their output in several and far away markets and that are involved in other international activities like Fdi or foreign production agreements. Such strategies involve bearing high fixed costs and undertaking large risks. There are therefore thresholds related to size, efficiency, skill structure of the work force, technology and even concerning corporate governance and access to financial markets that affect the undertaking of international activities, and which are independent of industry characteristics. These thresholds do not just concern the decision of whether to export or not, but the complexity of the international activity undertaken.

Policy implications are very important. First, there is a set of firm specific factors which are required to compete in the world market and which are independent from industry characteristics. If such factors are relevant for all firms, economic policy must contribute to reducing the cost of acquiring them, with horizontal measures open to all firms and not with targeted, sector specific interventions.

Second the export performance of firms improves linearly with firm size. The limited number of large companies in Italy is therefore a constraint to the strengthening of the international competitiveness of the country. Again, the objective of policy must be reducing constraints to growth, rather than targeting specific groups like small firms. Efficient firms, being them small or medium, must grow fast and enhance their market share, while inefficient ones exit.

Third the lack of human capital is also an important constraint to going international, independently of whether the industry is intensive in this factor of production. Strengthening the competitiveness of Italian firms, even those working in labour intensive traditional industries implies improving the supply of human capital.

Fourth, the financial structure of the firm also changes with internationalization: equity financing and self financing increases, whereas bank credit and public funds decline. The limited use by Italian companies of equity financing and the limited availability of innovative financial products is yet another constraint to international competitiveness policymaker should challenge.

Fifth, also the structure of ownership changes. Large exporters are organized in groups, financial holdings, they are often foreign owned and less likely to be family firms. Given how widespread family firms are in Italy, a clear understanding of what discourages them in undertaking comprehensive international activities is necessary.

Finally, some thinking is required on welfare issues, and this is indeed the scope of the twin report to this one. International competitiveness calls for a reallocation of resources towards the most efficient firms. This process does not go without pain and welfare tools must be devised to ease such social costs and at the same time smooth mobility across firms.

The last essay of the book, by Tito Boeri and colleagues, does indeed deal with the issue of welfare. They argue that specific policies should be put in place to reduce the social costs of the adjustment. These costs are twofold: on the one hand, there is segregation of young workers in secondary labour markets with little training and poor career prospects (the most recent estimates suggest that there are as many as 3 million of such workers in Italy), low social security contributions and insufficient unemployment insurance; on the other hand, unemployed elder workers find it particularly difficult to re-enter the labour market and many of them are not covered by unemployment insurance. For these reasons, the authors propose a set of policy reforms linked to the entry into and the exit from the Italian labour market.

The leitmotiv of the essay is the introduction of a set of standard minimum levels of protection, from a minimum income scheme to a uniform contributory rate for every adult worker. If implemented, these reforms may ensure Italy a soft-landing to the new product specialization. On the one hand, these policies ease workers’ transitions from low productivity to high productivity sectors. On the other hand, they ensure a smooth and stable long term horizon in the labour market for the younger cohorts, those endowed with better human capital and thus more adaptable to a changing specialization. The last key ingredient of the authors’ proposals is a safety net of last resort for those workers who do not «make it» throughout the transition.

Boeri and colleagues address the specific problems associated with the introduction of a minimum guaranteed income scheme in Italy, a country characterized by widespread informal activity, inefficient public administration and persistent regional differences in labour market performance. They also propose to reallocate through the entire unemployment pool the protection schemes and the associated resources currently granted only to selected workers in selected sectors. Protection against unemployment risk is also obtained by reducing the dualism between regular workers and workers hired under non standard labour contracts. In details, they propose i) a new open end contract that ensures a path toward employment stability for new entrants, ii) a minimum wage and iii) social security contributions uniform across workers.