| Abstract: |
The first part of the paper deals with the theoretical foundations of new
industrial policy tools aimed at promoting a process of interacting learning
among firms. I discuss the issue at three different levels: first, I define
the theoretical boundaries of my research interest within the considerable
economic literature dealing with industrial networks; secondly, I concentrate
on some endogenous growth and development models, in order to analytically
define the existing relationship between firm interactions, knowledge flows,
and productivity. Then, I discuss the relationship between knowledge diffusion
and productivity, with particular emphasis on the fundamental concept of
network multiplier. Finally, I carry out a microeconomic analysis of the
motivations that bring firms to interact with each other, and look for a role
for public institutions in promoting such interaction. I discuss in which
cases public intervention promoting the formation of a knowledge-sharing
network is justified by the existence of a sort of “market failure”, and
identify which variables are involved. In the second part of the paper I
analyze the most important Chilean networking program, the PROFO program. The
availability of relational data on a significant number of firm networks
allows me to investigate in detail the relationship between network structure,
public intervention and firm competitiveness. The econometric analysis
confirms a strong correlation between PROFO firms’ innovativeness and
industrial cooperation, proving the existence of an interactive learning
process among participant firms. I used sociometric data to refine my analysis
of the impact of the program on the network multiplier: not only do
participant firms also achieve better performance in terms of productivity,
but this performance is quite strongly correlated with firm centrality and
network density, which are the two variables best representing the structure
and function of the network multiplier and that, as I previously mentioned,
are strongly affected by PROFO. |