The Performances of Italian Vertical Intra-Industry Trade in Cultural vs ICT Goods

We assess if systematic differences arise in Italian vertical intra-industry trade in ICT and cultural products. We study the factors leading to increasing levels of VIIT since vertical two-way trade flows are prevalent and (in opposition to those of the horizontal type) result in complementary rather than competitive production and trading patterns.We decompose Italian bilateral flows in ICT and cultural goods (2000-2009) into three trade types: inter-industry, horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade, then provide a top-10 list of the Italian partners in terms of percentage of VIIT and finally analyze the Italian performances in terms of products relative quality.