Industrial policies in a Marshallian-based multilevel perspective

Drawing on a multilevel framework of Marshallian external economies, we present a perspective on the foundations of enterprise policies across different levels of government. In so doing, we add complexity to the traditional approach to industrial districts, which often disregards the role of supra-local policies. The argument is based on the idea that the main task of policy-makers is not just to provide generic public goods for communities of people defined by administrative boundaries, but also to support the provision of public goods that strengthen the competitiveness and innovative capacity of social and productive systems functioning at various territorial scales, from that of compact centres of industry to the nation-state and beyond. We apply this multilevel framework to the interpretation of the Italian enterprise policies.