Abstract

The Italian household appliance industry holds a position of leadership in the European manufacturing industry. The aim of this work is to give a descriptive interpretation of the strong restructuring process in which the Italian household appliance industry has been involved since '70s. In doing so, we will describe the industry evolution by using some analytical - and econometric - instruments, like the notion of economies of scale and learning by doing. The empirical analysis shows that the strong increase of demand for household appliance in the '90s has allowed Italian producers to fully exploit new forms of economies of scale arising from more efficient productive structure.