Local sustainability and competitiveness: the case of the ceramic tile industry

The present survey deals with the influence of pollution abatement on employment and competition in the ceramic tile manufacturing sector in four EU countries: Italy, Spain, France and Germany. It appears that Italy and Spain are the best performing ceramic tile industries. Their competitive advantage has mainly been driven by their particular type of organisation as an industrial district. In these countries firms are operating in clusters, which is generating important economies of agglomeration and permitting a high rate of innovation. But the industry seems now to be at a turning point, diseconomies of agglomeration, mainly due to pollution and congestion, are beginning to grow faster than economies of agglomeration and the environment is more and more becoming a limiting factor for competitiveness in industrial districts.