During the period from the fifties to the early eighties, the Italian industry has faced dramatic changes both in the international and domestic markets. The need to reduce the inflationary effects on the costs of production and
to recover profit margins has led to continuous restructuring of the production processes and considerable efficiency gains. This book is aimed at giving original results on the structural transformation in a number of manufacturing industries
during
a period of thirty years. Original research work has been carried out in the reconstruction of statistical data that were not directly available from the official sources and the interpretation of these data by means of the latest developments of
the economic theory of production. The study of the relationship between prices and quantities of the demanded factors of production has revealed some phenomena that had previously remained uncovered, as for example the complementarity
relationship between capital and labour inputs and substitution between capital and energy inputs.