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The market types that were the subject of an earlier essay in the Review are resurveyed in order to examine the changes that have occurred over the past fifty years. The entrepreneurial typologies identified then–one based on a market orientation, another that relies on state support, and a third, hybrid, approach–are still valid today. The liveliest components of the modern Italian economy, which operate as a fourth type of capitalism (mainly based on industrial districts), share features of the market typology, while, in southern Italy, the state's failure to support business is linked to the rise of organized crime. The more recent hybrid type features a new kind of actor, exemplified by Silvio Berlusconi, the central figure on the Italian political scene for almost two decades.

This article describes the features of the international mercury market during the first half of the twentieth century. It analyzes the various market agreements made, their effectiveness, and their consequences. The period studied is little understood, although it was one in which mercury production greatly increased. It was also one that saw persistent efforts at market manipulation, owing to a series of agreements between Spanish and Italian producers that proved very effective until the arrival of shipments of mercury produced by Soviet bloc members and by some developing countries.

In the late twentieth century, the European Union (EU) emerged as a global leader in setting environmental protections, including vehicle emissions standards. But member state consensus around environmental rules did not come easily, and the regional norms eventually set by the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, had complex origins. This article argues that common emissions standards were ultimately achieved through a public-private process during the program to create the Single European Market in the 1980s and 1990s. For regional policymakers, standards were key to achieving an internal car market and strengthening the auto industry's global competitiveness; for many European carmakers and their transnational business associations, common norms could facilitate economies of scale and level the playing field. The “liberal environmentalism” born out of this convergence of interests produced common standards that fell pragmatically between the greenest member states and those most invested in protecting their national champion firms.

During its early years, entrepreneurs in the Italian film industry maintained a complicated relation with the state. The arrangements between the joint-stock company Società Anonima Stefano Pittaluga and the Italian government in the interwar period were typical. Initially, Italian banks financed productions, despite the difficulties entailed in assessing a film's potential profitability. Following the rise of Benito Mussolini, the state invested in the industry, viewing it as a means of building nationalism and shaping the country's culture. While the deal was disastrous for the quality of the films, it nevertheless enabled filmmakers to gain technical experience and acquire production facilities that they were later able to put to better use.

The Italian fashion industry rose to a position of international prominence in the second half of the twentieth century. An important factor in the sector's global success was the opening up of the international, particularly the American, markets. The changes that occurred within the fashion industry after World War II, most critically the end of the Parisian monopoly, offered opportunities that were exploited differently by the various competitors. While cities like London and New York managed to promote themselves as alternatives to Paris, Italy was initially unable to create a single fashion capital. Florence, Rome, and Milan felt themselves equally entitled to become the staging ground for Italian fashion production, but Milan, benefiting from certain features of its productive structure, eventually emerged as the winner. The city's success was based on a long, steady accumulation of resources and the ability to harness its creative and managerial capabilities. The result was Milan's emergence as a fashion “superstar” in the 1970s.

This article examines the relationship between patents, appropriability strategies, and market for technology in the English brewing industry before 1850. Previous research has pointed to the apparent paradox that large-scale brewing in this period showed both a self-aware culture of rapid technological innovation and a remarkably low propensity to patent. Our study records how brewery innovators pursued a wide variety of highly distinct appropriability strategies, including secrecy, selective revealing, open innovation and knowledge-sharing for reputational reasons, and patenting. All these strategies could co-exist, although some brewery insiders maintained a suspicion of the promoters of patent technologies, which faded only in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, we find evidence that sophisticated strategies of selective revealing could support trade in inventions even without the use of the patent system. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

As a host country for foreign direct investment, conventional measures suggest that Italy is not a very attractive location. However, based upon a new database of the one hundred largest multinationals in the country, this article shows that foreign firms consistently played a crucial role in Italy's industrial activities throughout the twentieth century. A detailed analysis of investment patterns, distribution across industries, and entry modes reveals that they concentrated their investment in sectors of high technological and scale intensity, such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where domestic capabilities and competition remained weak during much of the period.

The entrepreneurial activity of Enrico Mattei, who headed the Italian state oil company AGIP (later ENI) from 1945 to 1962, laid the groundwork for the company's growth during the 1950s and 1960s. Mattei relied on a group of knowledgeable specialists, who were equipped with a complex set of capabilities that enabled them to oversee and perform operational tasks. The task of adapting that set of capabilities began in the latter half of the 1950s, when the firm underwent a transition from its main business of producing natural gas, which it had developed immediately after World War II, to prospecting for oil abroad.