The changing patterns of industrial production: How does it play for the Iberian Peninsula?

Abstract

It is well known that the weight of manufacturing in the economy has been decreasing substantially in many countries, which has become service-based economies, with the notable exception of Germany, Korea and China. This has happened together with an increasing democratization of the access to higher education and the opening-up of the science base in many world regions. On the other hand, the geographical concentration of industrial production have facilitated many of those regions to increasingly lose their productive ability, leading to changes in employment structure and the mobility of skilled people. This raises new concerns for science and industrial policies, which require to be discussed in terms of new forms of stakeholder engagement.We analyze the effects of location of production in the Iberian Peninsula, exploring data on public and business expenditure on Research and Development, industrial production, and people migration movements for recent decades and years. In addition, we look specifically at two different sectorial industrial patterns: the aeronautics sector and the oil and gas. We explore data from interviews, identifying key conditions for the development of these sectors, and providing support to the argument that specific regions, such as Portugal, with a relative low level of industrial activity, may develop support ecosystems. This requires specific public policies strengthening intermediary institutions, the sustainable growth of technology based firms and global technology partnerships, towards the supply of engineering and technical capabilities and, thus, developing industrial and technical capacity to further explore emerging market opportunities at a global level.