T H E C A S E O F I R I

September 20, 2017 | Autor: Dario Venditti | Categoria: Economics of Innovation, Istituto Ricostruzione Industriale, I.R.I.
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THE

CASE

OF

IRI

by Carla Di Benedetto, Dario Venditti and Luca Rivoira

A b s t r a c t We investigate the role of knowledge governance and the relative italian economic growth in the period 1950 – 1994. In particular, SOE have been one of the most effective mechanisms of knowledge governance. We investigate the role plays by the IRI group in the second part of the XX century in Italy. IRI became one of the main protagonists of the fast growth of the Italian economy with important investments in infrastructure, manufacturing activities, transport, etc. The present paper is based on documents provided by Cristiano Antonelli, and information taken from the IRI's official website.

1. INTRODUCTION The present work is divided into three parts and aims to present the ways in which the mechanisms of governance of technological knowledge have greatly influenced the economic growth of a number of companies, especially public ones. Specifically, we focus on the case of IRI, which are better represented in the twentieth century, as just mentioned. The first part of the paper has the objective of defining the subject / case study, making a brief mention of how technological innovation has made major changes in the economy (in the production and manufacturing process) in terms of growth. In particular, we want to highlight, such as technological knowledge generated by each company can generate positive effects on the production function. Therefore, the technological function, becomes not only an externality, but also a valuable resource in terms of development. Knowledge is, therefore, both an input and an output. The second part focuses on the case study: IRI. IRI (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction) was established January 24, 1933, initially as a temporary public body, to deal with the most serious banking crisis that struck the economy and industrial Italian in those years. It was founded with the purpose of acquiring industrial properties that were already in the hands of the three largest banks (Italian Commercial Bank, Banco di Roma, Credito Italian) banks defined as "mixed," according to the German model, who performed the function of commercial banks from investment banks. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the mixed banks have played an important role in supporting economic development Italian, facing a shortage of risk capital of the Italian entrepreneurial system. However, they came to bankruptcy and following the great crisis of 1929, following which they were defined banks of national interest. The first phase of IRI's life is one that goes from '800 to the end of the First World War. During this period, the three banks mentioned above, were approved by the Italian government to collect private savings with which to invest in companies operating in the sectors of heavy industry (steel industry and mechanical) and infrastructure (railways, ports, ships , armaments) who saw the same national government the main purchaser. However, at the end of the war, this mechanism collapsed because they were less public procurement, and its subsidiaries entered into crisis, and reacted by acquiring control of these reference banks, which in turn were pushed to borrow on international markets. With the global financial crisis of '29, banks, and companies controlled by them, went into default. IRI was born with the task of addressing the problem of fiscal and banking at the same time to deal with the reorganization of the shareholdings in undertakings which were held by banks. From this task derived its name: Institute for Industrial Reconstruction. The design and operation guidance were the work of Alberto Beneduce, Technical and administrator, as well as the first President of IRI. Within IRI, it was believed that it was necessary for the economic and social development of the country for public intervention to support that had characteristics of entrepreneurship and efficiency, in a framework of autonomy. The most

interesting part is definitely the one after World War II - the 50s. During this period, a strong emphasis was given to the control that the State exercised on public agencies, which in turn controlled the majority of the shares of private companies (www.archiviostoricoiri.it). This is the time that has been taken into account in our processed. Specifically, we will describe the model on which the institute has found inspiration and describe in detail the mechanisms of operation. The third and final part of the paper will demonstrate how, by the IRI, as the externalities of knowledge issued by the R & D carried out by public enterprises play a much stronger role than the knowledge externalities issued by the R & D carried out by private companies. It will therefore refer to a model that will describe in more detail than assumed. 2. KNOWLEDGE GOVERNANCE Knowledge governance is the approach to consider the real importance of the knowledge in the organization and in the product process. So it’s very important the quality and the efficiency of the ways that gives the possibility to generate knowledge in economic system. The real problem is how to use this knowledge better to improve the system, so the well using of technological knowledge in the centre of the process. Knowledge governance assumes a great importance in order to overcome the limits of the markets and the old analysis. Now we try to define knowledge governance: it is an array of institutional settings that mixes, uses and integrates a few economic situation in order to create and generate innovation. We can list some of them, like market transactions, personal interactions and communication, etc. Knowledge governance is really dynamics in fact it changes and assumes every new introduction of new models. It’s important to observe the progress made by economical knowledge in the last years. First of all, with the improving of knowledge and communication, information asymmetries has been reduced for customers. Second, a new approach to markets in terms of labor division, specialization and the allocation of resources to generate what it missed before. Markets signed some failures like the incapability to allocate in the right way the resources to generate new technological knowledge, so it needs of the public intervention. Technological Knowledge is the knowledge about technological changes in economy, in production and in processes. It is generated by each firms and displays relevant positive effects on the production function, so technological function becomes an externality and an important resource for the development. Instead, technological production function shows us increasing returns at system levels, but not at firm level, because the benefits of this action are limited and not every firm could use them. In this approach often external knowledge is only an output-augmenting factor, and not an input. The structural features of an economic systems, originated from many and different of factors, that are combined in a certain way, could produce exchanges that are necessary to produce new

knowledge, and then innovation. This structure specifies and qualifies the role of externalities into the innovation process, in fact technological changes are the key to generate new knowledge. So now, knowledge, is not only considered like a good, a simple good, but it has assumed another meaning for development process: it is at the same time an output and a input, and the combination of this options create new technological knowledge. We have also to consider that we are unable to create new technological knowledge without the existing one (or the old one). External knowledge is at the same time complementary and necessary, but it is not free, it has some costs of governance and of using. Obviously if a firm desires of adopting external knowledge, it has to sustain a cost. There are several reason ‘cos of it is a cost, like, copyright, the difficulty to directly introduction in the economic system. Knowledge also presents a tacit component, that agents know but they are not able to articulate it. So knowledge tacitness is necessary to implement labor division and the exchanges. This action has a main effect: the recombination generates new technological knowledge. Thus, the introduction of new innovation technology increases production function and it depends also by some factors like the emissary of knowledge spillovers, the recipients, the prospective users and, finally, the context in which the process takes place. We can identified four bases issue of knowledge governance: 1. The quality of communication channels 2. The characteristic of the users 3. The characteristic of the knowledge (where tacitness could operate) 4. The characteristic of the emissaries Larger is the variety of the four issues more possibilities of combination we can operate, in order to obtain more heterogeneous result and maybe more innovation technology. Emissaries play a key role in this process. There are some large firms that prefer to be the emissaries of technological knowledge with high levels of fungibility and thanks to an high levels of diversification they can generate quickly new technological knowledge. The most used form for research strategies is, or using an internal research center strictly connected to all parts of the corporation, or in according to public service, using universities and academic sector to generate studies and researches of new technological knowledge. The amount of technological knowledge generated depends of the structure of interactions and transactions that give the possibility to get and use the existing stock of knowledge we need to overcome the previous limits taking this input in the generation process of new technological knowledge. The direct intervention of public system is the real failure of the markets, because alone they couldn’t provide to generate and disseminate new knowledge: the researching costs are too much elevated and the return on the investment is not sure every time. Universities and academies receive

by the State public subsidies, also from business sector, in fact all the academic chairs are taken by talented specialized people and it is an incentive in the research of new knowledge. Public remedy to markets failure gets its success only if firms can use innovations discovered in their processes. An important role is played by dissemination, because, for example, with the publication on scientific journals the results of researches, the system can put in contact possible users with knowledge properties. This interaction creates a knowledge market and gives more importance to the labour of research. In order to be sustainable, the system has to operate with this operation: the institutional combination of publication-cum-taxation reconciles the problem of public incentives. Sometimes it happens that scientific knowledge generated in the academics is not easily applied in economic system, because academic system allocates the resources in not relevant economic domains or the problem is focalized in a theme of communication between academic system and market system. The real problem is to match scientific knowledge with needs of economic system, the solution of this dilemma is the generation of a technological knowledge like input, that a firm can use in its processes. Academic point of view is that all the scientific knowledge produced is essential, even if it isn not technically used, to support knowledge generation and economic growth. Economic viewpoint considers useful only the knowledge it can apply in business system. The conflict derives by the difficulties of application of scientific knowledge because of the entails costs of transformation: technological knowledge is the scientific knowledge applied to economic system. To solve this problematic conflict, great corporation creates R&D laboratories on the corporate structure. This internal centers has the role to transform scientific knowledge into technological knowledge ready to be used in processes. It can be designed that technological knowledge and external knowledge are complementary in the generation process of new knowledge and related to its tacit content suggest that systematic approach needs to understand the context of application of knowledge in order to get it useful; the system is defined in all his structure, relationship with firm and public office, the list of costs of knowledge application; the role of connection like principal agent between system and external knowledge; the possibilities of changing in the system. At the correct levels of prices and quantities market mechanisms provide the prices that convey every relevant information, the coordination between producers and costumers, correct amount of incentives for all the producers that really needs, finally a fair selection of agents and firm strategies. Governance mechanisms apply in several cases where transaction and interactions are not sufficient to take efficient decision using all the information available. For this reason is very important to understand the role of knowledge governance and its application. It is a set of rules, procedures and

protocols that work on using and producing of knowledge in economic system. Knowledge governance is dynamic and endogenous and it changes every time there are new modes resulted by collected process. It is the result of a self organization born by the several works of the processes agents, in particular it is useful in crisis moment, when take a good decision is the most difficult thing. It is not a static recipe, it is in periodic changing like answer to the several problems, market failures, crisis states, system limits, its being dynamic is the key to overcome these situations and play a central role in the innovation process. The approach that it can use is different second of the case of application, so there are few types discovered into the historical economic system across different country and systems: a. Public mode b. Corporate mode c. District mode d. Distributed mode e. New markets for knowledge. These modes are grown from a different mix of coordination, actions and choices in economic system: changing mechanisms, types, role of agents and the relation with academic system. 3. THE CASE OF STUDY: IRI So far we've analyzed the theoretical foundations to the various modes of knowledge governance and what we intend to present now is a particular case of study in which we can see a concrete application of some principles of knowledge governance. We are talking about the Italian IRI, the Institute for the Industrial Reconstruction. It was instituted in 1933 as a public body with the goal of reorganize technically, economically and financially the italian industrial activities that were damaged from the international crisis. It born as a temporary solution for the extraordinary financial episodes of 1932. The Italian government, indeed, wanted to replace mixed-banks with the State at the core of system and, as consequence, gave this task and responsibility to IRI. In order to do that, IRI was articulated in two different and autonomous organisms: the first one, the Demobilization Section (for the management of the industrial sharing from the portfolios of sharing of big mixed-banks) and the other, the Financing Section (with the task of providing the necessary financial resources to those companies that no longer had the financial support of the banks because of the crisis). Thought as a temporary solution, it was supposed to reorganize from a technical and financial point those enterprises that were in trouble and near bankrupt and its action consisted initially in offloading the industrial participations, whenever feasible. In 1933 it came to control 20% of total capital of Italian joint-stock companies and taking into account indirect chain-shareholding it came to control over 40%. Initially, all these companies were supposed to be sold back to private shareholders, but this did not happened: jut few

of them were sold back, while many of them remained under IRI control. Because of that, IRI organizational model quickly evolved and in 1937 IRI became a permanent management structure of financial assets, thus IRI became a holding company. IRI, inside, was composed by a huge variety of companies; they still keep their private form and their legal form of joint stock companies. With its permanent form and its function of an industrial holding company, IRI consolidated its entrepreneurial character as well as the financial one. Nevertheless, IRI had another and more wide task and function: it had the role of reorganize and reform the national economic organization, sustaining and directing it. Its role within the events related to the banking Law and during the war effort confirm this multiple function. During the post-WWII there was a period of uncertainty about its fate, in fact IRI was extremely ingrained to the fascist regime, especially because of its dirigisme that bound him to the regime. At the same time was recognized its determinant role for the entire Italian economy.

Thus, as

consequence, in 1948 was approved the new statute, reaffirming IRI's multiple role in the Italian industrial productive apparatus and as a specialized instrument of industrial policy. In order to better demonstrate the importance and peculiarity of IRI, we want to report an emblematic description of IRI's sphere of influence: IRI came to hold in the 1930’s: 100 per cent of the iron and steel war industry, of the artillery industry and of the coal-extraction industry (e.g. Terni, Ansaldo, Cogne); 90 per cent of shipyard; 80 per cent of railways production; 40 per cent of the nonmilitary iron and steel industry; plus minor but significant shares in the textile (rayon and cotton) and engineering industries. It also controlled 80 per cent of telephone services and of shipping lines, about 40 per cent of the banking and financial sector, as well as about 30 per cent of the electrical industry (Antonelli, Barbiellini and Amidei, 2012, p.5) With the new statue, the Italian government wanted to sustain and implement the original set-up of IRI, in order to allow it to operate in a market economy, being more and more competitive and relevant within the system. This process was actually quite different from what was happening in the main part of the other countries, where was taking place a process of divesting public properties. The Italian government, indeed, intended take advantage of IRI's role and position, in order to support the reconstruction and growth of Italy after the war. In fact, probably the most important role covered by IRI during post-WWII was the boost that it gave to the Italian economy, through an innovative and effective modernization process, «leading to the success Italian catch-up, in terms of contribution to fixed capital accumulation, infrastructure creation, investment in human capital and research and development activities» (Amatori, 2013). IRI thus assumed the leading role in the

Italian economic development and the formula management of the mixed economy brought the Institute, before with Eni and then with all the system of state holdings, to play a decisive role in the creation infrastructure and basic industries. The areas of intervention of IRI were capillaries and wide-ranging: the steel industry, in shipbuilding, telephony, telecommunications and in the radio sector, energy electrical, mechanical industry, in shipbuilding and navigation, transportation, aircraft, infrastructure (with the construction of the highway Autostrada del Sole), in the network of services, in the food industry, also developing the electronics compartment. With the economic crisis that faces the mid-70s - the oil crisis, the rupture of the fixed exchange rates system, the emergence of inflation and public spending out of control - the model of state holdings began to falter, especially compared to the problems determined by the large economic and financial suffering, not only of IRI, but also the ones of all the public bodies. The Italian industry proved not able to put in place timely the necessary processes for the industrial and financial restructuring, failed to react with readiness in order to renew the managerial class and face the global competition. The public industry in particular, it had to be loaded with social objectives that required to its management to pursue objectives other than those of the shareholder. IRI were also required huge investments in times of crisis. The Institute and its companies are financed with bank debt, which grew up in the seventies in dizzying levels. Since 1971, IRI results become negative. Investment growth, programmed for many years and disproportionate to the selffinancing capacity, the serious crisis in the steel and plant construction, the progressive disappearance of funds equipment and heavy losses, detonated the debt Institute. As consequence, in the second half of the '70s initiated projects and studies of reform. In the early 80s the government started a rethink on the role and management of public companies. With the restructuring of IRI, which began with the presidency of Prodi 1982 took away a disposal process. The turning point, however, was the 1992, when in the new institutional framework of the European Union took place the decisive transformation of public bodies in joint stock companies. In June-July 1992, IRI was transformed into a joint stock company (S.p.A.) and started off a irreversible process of privatization. From 1993 to 2000, IRI sold investments and businesses, whose proceeds went to the Ministry of Treasury, its sole shareholder; IRI left entirely economic sector: banking (disposing of the investments held in three banks of national interest: Comit, Credit and Bank of Rome), iron and steel plant, power, telecommunications (sale Stet-Telecom), highway, construction engineering and building infrastructure. Sold shipping companies and airlines. Latest operations were letting the airport system and the sale of the stake still held in Finmeccanica. On June 27th, 2000, the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting of IRI deliberated its dissolution, putting it into liquidation starting from the date of July 1st, 2000, according to a process that ended in November 2002; its remaining assets was incorporated in Fintecna, one of its subsidiaries.

That is for what mainly concerned the historical part related to IRI group. Now we want to focus on the strong points that permitted IRI to had such a huge and important role in the Italian industrial politics. What was the basis of its strength and power was its institutional setup: IRI was a Stateowned enterprise but composed by a huge variety of private companies. These private companies left into IRI visible trace of private entrepreneurship and management style in IRI's setup. Thus, IRI was owned by the Treasury (that possessed 100% of its capital) while at the same time it operated in the economy through all its companies, whose shares were traded in Stock Exchange. So, because of this presence of a variety of companies, constrained, in a certain way, IRI to make profits in order to be able to pay dividends to shareholders. Briefly, it was forced to be strongly competitive on the market, although it was a State-owned enterprise. The basic aim of Italian SOEs in fact was to actively support the growth of the system providing it with investments in basic infrastructure, including the generation of knowledge, that could stir additional flows of investments by private companies, increasing their profitability and productivity. The mismatch between the ‘large-r’ generation of technological knowledge and its ‘small-er’ exploitation made room for the dissemination of effective knowledge spillovers providing the Italian national innovation system with a large supply of high quality knowledge externalities that could be easily and effectively accessed by other firms in the system and used in the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge and in the introduction of technological innovations (Antonelli, Barbiellini and Amidei, 2012, p. 8). Nevertheless, probably the biggest role played by IRI was in building and implementing the Italian research system: huge investments were done in the construction and implementation of advanced research laboratories. Within its strategy for R&D sector, IRI decided to follow the American model, especially for what concerned research laboratories, in which it was explicitly imitated the model of American large multidivisional corporations' labs. This aspect was at the basis of the Italian growth in R&D sector during the second half of XX century. State-owned enterprises, indeed, strongly contributed to the R&D sector growth and data confirm this situation. In 1986 IRI reached a maximum of 15% of all national investment in R&D, while SOE reached a maximum of 22% of all national R&D and 38% of total Business enterprise sector R&D (BERD). IRI’s R&D intensity, as measured by R&D expenses on total sales, reached levels similar to the international counterparts, thanks in particular to R&D investment expansion by

Finmeccanica and STET companies, inter-company CSM steel research centre, naval engineering Cetena and Centro ricerche SME for the agri-food industry, as well as a result of the creation of new corporate labs, reaching the number of 90 in mid 1980s (Doria and Tolaini 2013, p. 456). Until 1980 IRI’s R&D expenditures on average accounted for over 70% of all SOEs R&D (around 55% until early 1990s). Since mid 1980s instead SOE’s R&D weight decreased, and especially IRI’s R&D retrenched markedly in the early 1990s with the privatization process (Antonelli, Barbiellini and Amidei, 2012, p. 10). Similarities with the American system can also be seen within the university field: strong and systematic relations between companies and academic system, composed by interactions and career exchanges. The empirical evidence shows that the share of research performed extra-muros but funded by SOE’s (not consolidated for industrial groups), as well as by the IRI group – with 21% of total SOEs R&D expenses in 1979 and 14% in 1991 – was almost double than the corresponding share of the research funded by the private firms (13 and 9% in the same years) (Antonelli, Barbiellini and Amidei, 2012, p. 13). Concluding, looking at all of these data and setups it is possible to state that IRI played an incredibly and irreplaceable role for all concerns the R&D sector and the generation of knowledge. Indeed, IRI really succeeded in the dissemination of technological knowledge. At the same time, another important result is findable in institutional setup; a setup that permitted IRI to remain competitive with private business, trough investments in the generation and dissemination of new technologies and through a decentralize structure, with the firms at the basis and at the same time independent from the top of the structure. 4. THE MODEL According to the above up to now, in this part of the paper, we want to explain a simple model that fits the role of knowledge spillovers according to their origin. So we want to show how knowledge spillovers issued by the R&D carried out by public enterprises play a much stronger role than the knowledge externalities issued by the R&D carried out by private firms. The basic proposition is that the knowledge spillovers do not work automatically in all conditions, in fact technological

spillovers are not all alike. The conditions are necessary to make spillovers able to support the generation of new techonological knowledge, the introduction of techonological innovations and hence the eventual increase of TFP. Knowledge spillovers require a specific institutional context to be useful and effective. Their actual impact varies according to the types of knowledge: internal or external; and the characteristics of the recipients and the characteristics of the emissaries. The dissemination of technological knowledge is not the spontaneous and automatic result of spillovers, but the result of knowledge governance mechanisms based upon an organized system of knowledge transactions – cum – interactions where actors play the role of hubs. Specifically, we want to prove that knowledge externalities stemming from research activities performed by the IRI corporations were very effectives, more than research activities performed by the private firms, in terms of their contribution to the third parties generation of additional technological knowledge and hence introduction of technological innovations with the ultimate effect of providing a stronger support to the increase of TFP ai the system level. According to what said, it is possible to affirm that the knowledge generation function provides the knowledge that is necessary in the technology production function to produce all the other goods. In the generation of new technological knowledge , internal and external knowledge are complementary inputs (Nelson, 1982; Weitzman, 1996). In “our” model, we distinguish between the external knowledge generated by the private firms and the external knowledge generated by the IRI. So, in the model in which we make reference, the knowledge generation function and the cost equation can be written in this way: (1) T = ( IKa EKPb EKIRIc) with a+b+c =1 (2) C = pIK + uEKP + vEKIRI where T represents new technological knowledge generated with constant returns to scale by means of internal knowledge (IK) and external knowledge spilling from private firms (EKP) and IRI (EKIRI). Here (p), (u) and (v) represent their respective unit costs. The unit cost of internal knowledge p consists of the market price of the resources that are necessary to perform R&D activities and to learn. The unit costs of external knowledge (u) and (v) spilling respectively from private firms and from IRI, consist in the cost of the resources that are necessary to access and to use the knowledge possessed by other agents in the system, into the recombinant generation of new technological knowledge. Pecuniary knowledge externalities are found where and when the costs of external knowledge (u) and (v) are below a general equilibrium level for the cost of external knowledge (x*). If, where and when knowledge were a standard economic good, x would be found where its marginal and average costs meet its marginal product. If the actual costs of external knowledge (u) and (v) are lower than equilibrium levels the amount of knowledge generated T will be larger than the equilibrium level

T*. The firm will produce more and cheaper technological knowledge than in a system where external knowledge have higher – equilibrium – costs (Antonelli, 2013). Based on what was stated by Griliches, technological knowledge enters the standard Cobb-Douglas production function of all the other goods with constant returns to scale of each firms. Hence, we can write in this way: (3) Y = A ( Ig Td ) with g+d =1 (4) C = cI + sT where I is a bundle of tangible inputs, c are their costs, T is technological knowledge, s its cost and A measures TFP levels. Firms can actually benefit of positive pecuniary knowledge externalities to access external knowledge and hence take advantage of the upstream localized generation of larger amounts of ‘cheaper’ technological knowledge, with cost below equilibrium level, when s < s*. In these circumstances they will produce an output Y that is larger and cheaper than in equilibrium conditions. The level of TFP is measured by the ratio between the real historic levels of output Y’, and the theoretical ones calculated as the equilibrium use of production factors. So, we can write as follows: (5) A= Y’ / I* T* Where I* and T* are the equilibrium quantities of production factors and A measures TFP. The case for a positive value of the TFP takes place when the access to technological knowledge as an input into the generation of new technological knowledge is affected by localized out of equilibrium conditions and is cheaper than in equilibrium conditions. Hence the output of all the other goods produced downstream in localized equilibrium conditions characterized by pecuniary knowledge externalities will be larger than in equilibrium conditions. The results can be summarized in this way: firms produce more than expected and hence experience an ‘un-explained’ residual in the actual levels of output that are larger than the expected ones (Y’ >Y*), if and when: 1) (u < x*) and (vT*) → the localized output in terms of technological knowledge is larger than in general equilibrium conditions: the actual levels of T (T’) are larger than the general equilibrium levels; 3) (s < s*) → the costs of the technological knowledge that enters the Cobb-Douglas production function for all the other goods are also lower. These passages are very important to affirm that the basic proposition that TFP levels and rates of growth depend on the levels and the rates of change of the discrepancy between the general

equilibrium costs of external knowledge and the actual localized ones according to their respective sources. Hence we can put forward the basic proposition that TFP levels stem from pecuniary knowledge externalities: (6) A = f (T’/T*) (7) T’/T* = g (u / x* v/x*) (8) A = h (g(u/x* v/x*)) The hypotheses of the model can be tested with a simple econometric specification, where TFP (A) is the dependent variable of the R&D activities of private firms and SOEs: (9) A = a + b R&DP + c R&DIRI + e. The assumption is that the parameter of the R&D expenditures of IRI (R&DIRI) is significantly larger than the parameter of R&D costss conducted by private firms (R&DP): so we waiting that: c>b. 4.1 EXAMPLE In order to prove the initial hypothesis and then to measure the contribution of the R&D performed by the SOE and the private firms in Italy in the second half of the XX century, we consider the time-series of the R&D expenditures performed by IRI, the time-series of the R&D performed by private Italian companies and the levels of TFP for the whole Italian economy during the second half of the XX century. The period under consideration is 1963-1994. Looking at the graphs below it can see that in the IRI corporations, R & D has a more positive trend than in private Italian firms. And this has had an influence on the level of TFP for the Italian Economy.

In conclusion, we can say that R&D play an important role in the development of Italian aggregate TFP, which basically confirms the initial results displayed with the OLS estimation of equation(9). (9) A = a + b R&DP + c R&DIRI + e. (Antonelli, Barbiellini Amidei, Fassio). 5. CONCLUSION If we think to knowledge in relation with economic system, we have to focalize our attention only to the part we can transform in technological knowledge. Economic system needs of this kind of knowledge apply to improve itself, its processes and create innovation. The only way to get this situation is to have enough input to generate an useful output like we said before, this input is the existent knowledge, because o new knowledge could be generate without the existent (or old) one. The agents of this knowledge generation are the R&D laboratories of great corporations that have a strong relation with markets needs, so they are more directly on apply, and finally we find the public research, university or academic system, that are knowledge producer machines, but not always what they produce it could be applied in economic system, so at this level we find a little failure in innovation process. The only way to create innovation is to change and mix, in different way the existent knowledge. To get all of this, we need a central system, that organizes and directs the work and gives the direction of the innovation process: Knowledge Governance, and it operates in different modes, second of the historical contest, country and economic system it takes place. The IRI has made a decisive contribution to the economic development that characterized Italy in the postwar period. The realization of an innovative system led to the overcoming of the difficulties of the national productive system and constituted a condition for the growth of the Italian industry. The IRI has set up and implemented projects that were the "carriers" of productive development and modernization of the country. In this context, they placed some embodiments, in which quesgli years had a lot of value: the creation of a national network of telecommunications, which Italy then positioned among the first countries in Europe; implantation and development of the broadcasting system; the creation of the national airline. The innovative impulse IRI was pursued with significant initiatives in the technology sector: industry power programs, electronics, instrumental, civil and military; microelectronics, aerospace, the first "software house" Italian, the creation of facilities for research and development related to key areas of the Group's presence. In this set of activities, a commitment of significant size was addressed in directing the investments of the Group companies in the South, in the vision of the initiatives on insulation breakdown, drive development (www.archiviostoricoiri.it) . Finally, we can conclude that if the IRI has demonstrated the role of innovation and technological

knowledge was crucial when interpreting the Italian experience economic growth.

REFERENCES ANTONELLI, BARBIELLINI, AMIDEI

AND

FASSIO, 2012 The Mechanisms of Knowledge Governance:

state owned enterproses and Italian economic growth, 1950-1994. ANTONELLI, C. AND LINK, A. (eds.)(2014) The Dynamics of knowledge Governance. DORIA, M., TOLAINI, R. (2013), Riposizionamento e ristrutturazione del gruppo negli anni Ottanta. Prorità e vincoli, in F. Silva (ed.), Storia dell’IRI -3 I difficili anni ’70 e i tentativi di rilancio negli anni ‘80, Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari. WEBSITES www.archiviostoricoiri.it

CONTACTS: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

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