AN ANALYSIS OF THE LOCATION OF INSTRUMENT MANUFACTURE IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

ABSTRACT Instrument manufacture is one of the high-technology industries which has become increasingly conspicuous in the mid-twentieth century. It is an industry which, in a locational sense, is little influenced by transportation costs, i. e., it is footloose, and is probably best understood in terms of the concept of agglomeration economies. Within the framework of agglomeration economies two hypotheses were advanced. The first proposed that instrument manufacture would be closely associated with the more sophisticated later-stage industries with which it has input-output dependencies. The second hypothesis, essentially, a labor agglomeration hypothesis, suggested that instrument manufacture would be highly associated with the distribution of scientists and engineers. Two scales were used in testing the hypotheses, the states of the United States, and the seventy-three SMSA's for which detailed manufacturing data were available. The linkage hypothesis was tested by means of both simple and multiple cor...