Competitiveness Analysis of the Italian Manufacturing firms: A Multilevel Longitudinal Approach

During these last 5 years macro-data showed a loss of competitiveness in EU countries, and in particular in Italy, compared to other economic areas. Indicators and analyses at national level to measure competitiveness are, however, not always relevant since they are subject to criticism and not particular useful to implement adequate economic intervention policies. To this purpose it is necessary to investigate, at firm and sector levels, the variability of the competitiveness indicators and which factors affect them. In the present work the analysis has been implemented using an experimental data set of microdata at firm level, for years 1999 until 2004, for a population of about 61,000 manufacturing firms. In order to investigate adequately the effects of some characteristics of the firms and of the industrial sector on the performance and competitiveness indicators and their variability during the period, a multilevel longitudinal regression model has been implemented.