The determinants of outsourcing and off-shoring strategies in industrial districts: evidence from Italy

Outsourcing has increasingly become a distinguished feature of the recent evolution of industrial districts and it constitutes the object of this study. The study focuses on the industrial district of Castel Goffredo in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy, which is the largest European manufacturing area specialized in tights. It analyses the determinants of outsourcing as a function of firms' specific characteristics and how they affect the geographical reach of outsourcing relations. This firm-level analysis allows one to grasp the impact of firm heterogeneity on the outsourcing decision.