Global value chains and the impact of COVID-19 crisis: the case of the Italian gold jewellery

This thesis aim consists in analysing, throughout the international lenses of Global Value Chains, the reactions and the responses of the three main Italian gold jewellery industrial districts - namely, Arezzo, Valenza Po and Vicenza - against Covid-19 crisis. Thanks to the blend of two important frameworks such as GVCs and IDs, the contribution that the thesis wants to offer consists in an empirical quantitative analysis that embrace the local and the global dimensions of jewellery IDs. After a review of the related literature and on the main effects of Covid-19 crisis on the Italian economy and on the jewellery industry, the research proceeds with the definition of three hypotheses. The first is related to the ability of firms pertaining to IDs of being more performing against crises with respect to other non-district firms: in order to test this hypothesis, a statistical model was built. The second hypothesis refers to the ability of IDs embedded within GVCs suffered more the initial phase of Covid-19 crisis of being more able to quickly recover from recession periods. To verify this hypothesis, a deep analysis of import and export official data (found on Coeweb, ISTAT) has been done. The third hypothesis wants to make a comparison between the current crisis and other past crises that IDs faced. What has emerged, referring to the first hypothesis, is that a "district effect" across cluster firms and non-district firms is not statistically significant within the model utilized. What resulted for the second hypothesis and also according to second sources, is that the jewellery IDs showed a considerable degree of resilience and adaptation during crisis periods. For the last hypothesis, some interesting points have emerged: even though the performance, import and export trends of 2020 show similarities with data referring to the Great Recession and the globalization crisis (De Marchi et al., 2014), the reactions of IDs have been different and mainly related to higher diversification of export markets. The most adaptive district, Arezzo, also re-focused its core business concentrating its production during crisis in gold bars in order to mitigate the negative effects of the economic downturn, reducing at the same time the production of jewels.