Heritage and Agglomeration: The Akron Tyre Cluster Revisited

Abstract

We use new data on the location and background of entrants into the US tyre industry to analyse why the industry became so regionally concentrated around Akron, Ohio, a small city with no compelling advantages for tyre production. We analyse where the Ohio entrants originated and conduct various analyses of how proximity to other tyre firms affected the longevity of tyre producers. We also examine how the heritage of the Ohio entrants influenced their origin and longevity. Our findings suggest that the Akron tyre cluster grew primarily through a process of organisational reproduction and heredity rather than through agglomeration economies. The first pneumatic automobile tyre was produced by BF Goodrich in 1896. Goodrich was located in Akron, Ohio, which over the next 40 years became the centre of the US automobile tyre industry. Although Akron was a small city with no compelling natural advantages for tyre production, at its peak Akron and its environs accounted for over 60% of all tyres produced in the US. This is one of the most extreme cases of industrial clustering in the history of the US without an obvious geographical rationale. Despite being over 100 years old, Akron thus provides a rare opportunity to gain insight into the determinants of industry agglomerations, a phenomenon that has been of central interest in the burgeoning field of economic geography. The main purpose of this article is to marshal new data we collected for all tyre producers and especially those located in Ohio to assess the factors that gave rise to the Akron cluster. The rise of the Akron cluster is particularly intriguing because it has been widely cited as supportive of modern theorising about how agglomeration economies shape indus trial clusters. Relying on a wealth of historical materials, scholars have developed an account of the rise and subsequent fall of the Akron tyre cluster that resonates with modern theories of regional economics (Barker, 1939; Gaffey, 1940; Allen, 1949; Knopf, 1949; Frank, 1952; Sobel, 1954; Overman, 1957; Knox, 1963; Bazaraa, 1965; Jeszeck, 1982; Krugman, 1991 a; Sull, 2001). The account begins with a historical accident, the chance location of Goodrich in Akron in 1871. Goodrich became a successful producer of bicycle tyres, among other rubber products, which enabled it to capitalise on the subsequent demand for automobile tyres when the automobile industry took off in the early twentieth century. It also influenced the formation nearby of a few other successful