Industrial Concentration Patterns Research Articles

Industrial Concentration Patterns of the European Union

The analysis of concentration patterns at both the national and the regional levels in the European Union (EU) initially reveals contradictory results of concentration and deconcentration trends. However, these industrial concentration trends in the two spatial dimensions are, in essence, complementary, because further analysis indicates that industrial activities continue to move towards the most dynamic countries but not towards the same powerful regions. This outcome is verified by an econometric approach which, by studying the EU-15 and new EU member states, aims to reveal the characteristics of two deviated productive systems and two different levels of maturity. The empirical analysis shows the existence of a non-monotonic relation between concentration and integration. . L’analisi dei modelli di concentrazione nell’unione Europea (UE) rivelano, sia a livello nazionale sia a livello regionale, evidenze empiriche contraddittorie nei trend di concentrazione e deconcentrazione. Queste dinamiche, tuttavia, sembrano essere sostanzialmente complementari dal momento che le attivita produttive continuano a spostarsi verso i paesi piu dinamici ma non verso le stesse regioni dominanti. Questo risultato e verificato tramite un approccio econometrico che, soffermandosi sulla UE15 e sui nuovi stati membri dell’Unione, si propone di individuare le caratteristiche di due distinti sistemi di produzione e due diversi livelli di maturazione. L’analisi empirica mostra l’esistenza di una relazione non monotonica tra concentrazione ed integrazione.

Industrial concentration of ethnic minority- and women-owned businesses: evidence from the survey of business owners in the United States

Using a confidential national survey of ethnic minority- and women-owned businesses in the United States and multivariate regression analyses, this study examines how businesses are concentrated in different industrial sectors across ethnicity and gender, and how the segmentation by the divide of ethnicity and gender is associated with business performance. The findings indicate that male- and female- owned businesses have distinctive industrial concentration patterns. In particular, compared to white women, businesses owned by women from ethnic minority groups are highly concentrated in a limited number of industrial sectors. Concentration in specific industrial sectors does not necessarily mean poor performance when measured by sales, size of employment or payrolls. However, for women-owned businesses, those sectors obviously pay less and have marginal profits, especially if considering the size of the firms.

The Regional Patterns of Manufacturing Industries in Java Region, Indonesia

Empirical studies on geographical distribution of manufacturing in Indonesia demonstrate that manufacturing are localized in major metropolitan areas as well as a set of emerging regions. The objective of the paper is to investigate the patterns of manufacturing industries located in the three biggest region in Java namely West, Central and East of Java. Further, the study aim to explore whether regional specialization and industrial concentration patterns had changed during the 1998-2007. Based on the contribution analysis, the study found that distribution of manufacturing in Java was concentrated only in several areas. Turning to concentration index based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), the study show that during 1998-2007, Java’s region became more specialized and industry became more concentrated.

Regional Specialization and Industrial Concentration Patterns in the Turkish Manufacturing Industry: An Assessment for the 1980–2000 Period1

Previous studies on geographical distribution of economic activity in Turkey demonstrate that firms are localized in major metropolitan areas as well as a set of emerging regions. The aim of the paper is to complement the findings of the studies on regional and industrial concentration in Turkey's manufacturing industry by exploring whether regional specialization and industrial concentration patterns changed during the 1980–2000 period. The paper further aims to explore the driving forces of industrial concentration in Turkey's manufacturing industry, particularly during Turkey's economic integration process that started with trade liberalization after 1980 and further developed with the Customs Union in 1996. Regional specialization and industrial concentration are measured by GINI indices Turkey's NUTS-2 regions at the four-digit level for the years between 1980 and 2000. To investigate which variables determine industry concentration, systematic relation between the characteristics of the industry and industrial concentration is tested. Following the method proposed by Paluzie, Pons and Tirado, a panel regression equation is estimated, where the dependent variable is the Gini concentration index and the independent variables are the variables that represent the characteristics of the sectors that follow the predictions of classical trade theory, new trade theory and new economic geography. The major finding of the study is that during 1980–2000, Turkey's regions became more specialized and industry became more concentrated. Increases in the average values of regional specialization and industrial concentration support the prediction developed by Krugman hypothesis that regions become more specialized and industries become more concentrated with economic integration. In exploring the driving forces of industrial concentration, the findings demonstrate that firms tend to cluster in regions where there are economies of scale.

Mapping Sectoral Patterns of Technological Accumulation into the Geography of Corporate Locations. A Simple Model and Some Promising Evidence

Economies of agglomeration are central to the understanding of the emergence of industrial clustering. However, existing models that incorporate such agglomeration economies have been largely neglecting the vast amount of empirical evidence on inter-sectoral differences in the patterns of industrial concentration. In this paper, we propose a baseline model of firm location in presence of dynamic increasing returns. The model is able to deliver testable implications about the long-run distribution of the size of spatial clusters which we test against data on geographical location of Italian firms belonging to different sectors. We show that accordance of theoretical predictions with data is quite high. Moreover, we find statistically significant differences in the strength of economies of agglomeration, not only across geographical locations but also across industrial sectors. We argue that geographical clustering is highly affected by intersectoral differences in innovation patterns and learning regimes that map into different drivers of sector- and location-specific dynamic increasing returns to agglomeration.