Manufacturing and productive districts in Sicily between incentives and development
One hundred and fifty years after the unification of Italy, the Mezzogiorno and Sicily, in particular, continue to be severely lagging behind the rest of Italy and its most developed part. This paper focuses on the productive districts regarding the industry to the light of the first three years after the creation and recognition of these districts by the Sicilian Regional Administration and the expected expiry of the relative Patti di Sviluppo (Development Agreements). The first goal of the paper is to evaluate the coherence of these districts to the model of the ‘meta-district’ implicitly evoked in the regional legislation, and secondly whether the combination of incentives and development is a winning strategy for the industry and the development of the whole Sicilian economy.