Distretti, pmi, competitività. Analisi e proposte sulla Sicilia[Districts, SMEs, competitiveness. Analysis and proposals on Sicily]

First of all, the paper analyzes the competitive strength of the Italian districts and of their small and medium firms, without disregarding some critical aspects of such a productive system. In the second place, the paper provides a wide and deep analysis concerning the productive districts in Sicily, which is a lagging region in terms of development, and it suggests several proposals to make the working of these districts more effective for the competitiveness and the development of the regional economy. Sicily, in fact, must re-think its economic positioning in the global market because of the current global economic crisis, where the Asian countries are becoming the leading economies, and the countries of the South Coast of the Mediterranean are also playing an increasing role. The analysis points out the need for a region like Sicily, which is particularly weak in the manufacturing sector even with respect to the other regions of the South of Italy, to improve its human capital and to transform this human capital into social capital, and, at the same time, to enrich its endowments of material and institutional infrastructures, because these elements are all together essential factors for the competitiveness of the districts and their firms. Furthermore, in this essay we put forward the thesis that the institutions and the State must change their attitudes and contribute to create, also through the adoption of the principle of subsidiarity, which regulates the interplay between institutions, society and the market, the favorable conditions for the competitiveness and the growth in Sicily, which is a region that spends a great amount of public money, without an adequate return in terms of growth of income and employment.