Big Business Performance in Twentieth-Century Italy

This chapter provides an assessment of the strategies, structures, and performances of the largest Italian corporations during the twentieth century. The study includes manufacturing activities, utilities, and services, and employs a multifactorial definition of performance, of both a qualitative and a quantitative nature (return on equity and holding return). It provides a contribution to the knowledge of the history of Italian big business in the framework of the comparative studies collected in this book. For this reason, its structure and purposes, and the empirical evidence on which it is based, are slightly different from those of other quantitatively based research on the strategy, structure, and performances of Italian enterprises including state capitalism and family business.