IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/indinn/v30y2023i1p135-158.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disrupting regional efficiency gaps via Industry 4.0 firm investments

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Fabio Forgione
  • Carlo Migliardo

Abstract

This paper has two principal purposes. The first is to measure the operational efficiency gain that adopting new advanced technologies, defined as the fourth industrial revolution allows firms to achieve. The second is to challenge whether Industry 4.0 investments bring about strong enough improvement in firm performance to address the historical regional development gaps in Italy. Using a sample of 2609 firms observed during the period 2016–2019, we estimate technical efficiency scores by applying a one–step stochastic frontier analysis. This technique allows us to simultaneously relate operating performance to a set of regional dummy variables and assess the Industry 4.0 investment share of total firm investment expenditure. The stylised facts indicate substantial efficiency disparities between smart factories and firms that do not implement such investments. The adoption of new technologies partially mitigates the Italian regional efficiency gap, bridging the distance between Southern Italy and the rest of Italy.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Fabio Forgione & Carlo Migliardo, 2023. "Disrupting regional efficiency gaps via Industry 4.0 firm investments," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 135-158, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:indinn:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:135-158
    DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2022.2063111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13662716.2022.2063111
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13662716.2022.2063111?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Silvia Massini & Mabel Sanchez Barrioluengo & Xiaoxiao Yu & Reza Salehnejad, 2024. "Digital transformation in firms: determinants of technology adoption and implications for performance," MIOIR Working Paper Series 2024-01, The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), The University of Manchester.
    2. Stan Metcalfe, 2024. "Joseph Schumpeter, Alfred Marshall and the nature of restless capitalism," MIOIR Working Paper Series 2024-02, The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), The University of Manchester.
    3. Natália Barbosa, 2024. "Artificial Intelligence and exporting performance:Firm-level evidence from Portugal," GEE Papers 183, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Sep 2024.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:indinn:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:135-158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIAI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.