Cluster evolution in mature Industrial cluster. The case of Prato Marshallian ID after the entrance of Chinese firm populations (1945-2011)

Cluster life cycle is recently attracting increasing attention and notwithstanding some authors showed some criticism proposing alternative approaches, most scholars agreed the cluster evolution literature is still in search of an appropriate analytical frame work. The work deals with the evolution of textile-clothing Prato Industrial District, focusing on last twenty years, characterised by the settlement of a large numbers of Chinese firms. We contribute to this debate following an evolutionary approach according to the Organisational Ecology and density dependence theory. Results allow us to reconstruct the internal dynamics of Prato ID from its birth till today and identify in which stage of the life cycle it is currently, providing a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of cluster evolution.