Spatial Agglomeration, Human and Social Capital: The Case of Turkey Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Over the last three decades, new economic theories explode the factors depending on space and spatial characteristics. In this process, it is developed the theories on social-cultural aspects and spatial characteristics of regions instead of traditional economic theories. These theories have been main strategy for economic development and growth. Economic development has not been considered independently from space by these theories and economic performance of a region was emphasized importance of economic actors, institutional and economic infrastructure as well as geographic features. Geography or spatial features contribute to increase not only skilled workforce, knowledge spillover and distribution but also social relations and interaction. In other words, the social-cultural and humanity factors relating with spatial and geography are major factors affecting on the development and also growing of economic activities. Especially, while industrialization as engine of regional development has been benefiting from the advantages offered by spatial features, clustering of economic activities and relationships among actors are shaped according to socio-cultural and human factors revealed spatial features. In this context, clustering of economic activities has been one of the new areas of interest in the theory of economic geography. Therefore, clustering of economic activities and human-social-spatial resources has been emphasized to play a major role in growth and development of regions by essays of the new economic geography. In that context, the aim of this paper is to determine the effects of human and social capital in the spatial agglomeration of economic activities in case of Konya-Turkey. In this study, the agglomeration tendencies for manufacturing industry in Konya, which have major potentials in terms of human and social capital and manufacturing industry potential, is analysed comparatively depending on secondary resources and using statistical. In this paper, it is answered a question: can the spatial agglomeration tendency be more dominant in the regions with higher human and social capital potential than the regions with low human and social capital potential. In this framework, the paper is composed of four chapters. At first, it is involved theoretical background including theoretical evaluating and also conceptual explaining about terminology such as new economic geography theories, agglomeration/clustering, human and social capital. Secondly, it is called methodological chapter that it involves the determination of variables, explanation analytic methods and techniques, and also giving information relating with the development of Konya manufacturing industry. Thirdly, it is evaluated data getting from analyse and methods techniques. And last, it presents results and evaluations relating with the study findings.