Productivity change and competitiveness in the Food Industry: an italian perspective

The first part of this paper is dedicated to the innovation in the Italian Food Industry (IFI), productivity growth, structural changes, investments and specific pattems of IFI, compared with other Industries in the EU. The second part discuss the methodology to measure the technical progress with factor productivity: (total and partial ). Specific attention is devoted to the meaning of the capital data used. They give the consistency and value of physic or engineering capital: plant, building, machinery. Physica! capitals can be a good measure of capitai productivity only if the technologies they underline will optimally control the evolution ,of biological processes significantly affecting the quantity and quality of the processed food. Methodology consisted in the use of Divisia indexes to determine the total and partial productivity. The capacity of these indexes to be a realistic measure of progress has been examined theoretically and comparing the information's of these indexes with the econometric estimates. The results obtained emphasised the role of capitai whìch growth was superior to the other factors labour and energy. The capital affected heavity the total factor productivity (TFP) that showed the minimum value in 75. and the maximum in 87. The productivity growth is not continuos, and the reason can be found in the cyclical trend of capital and lag between investment and productivity that caused cycles 3-4 year length