Empirical Studies in Industrial Location: An Assessment of Their Methods and Results*

Abstract

This paper surveys recent evidence on the determinants of (national and/or foreign) industrial location. We find that the basic analytical framework has remained essentially unaltered since the early contributions of the early 1980's while, in contrast, there have been significant advances in the quality of the data and, to a lesser extent, the econometric modelling. We also identify certain determinants (neoclassical and institutional factors) that tend to provide largely consistent results across the reviewed studies. In light of this evidence, we finally suggest future lines of research.

Location determinants of high-growth firms

“…ArauzoCarod, Liviano-Solis, and Manjón-Antolín (2010) suggest that the three basic firm locational determinants (see pp. 702-5) are: (1) neoclassical factors such as agglomeration economies, the quality of human capital and transportation infrastructure;…”

The mechanisms of agglomeration: Evidence from the effect of inter-industry relations on the location of new firms

“…Our dependent variable is defined as the count of firms created in 2002,2003 and 2004 by industry and location. 17,600 new manufacturing firms were created in Spain in this 6 This literature is reviewed in Rosenthal and Strange (2004) and Arauzo-Carod et al (2010). 7 The cities we use were built by Boix and Galleto (2006) The distribution of counts of new firms per city and industry is summarized in Table 1a.…”

Time and space model of urban pollution migration: Economy-energy-environment nexus network

“…These traditional methods still play an important role in today's resource management and allocation. For example, Ahlfeldt [20] found the mono-centric model useful in certain conditions, and Arauzo-Carod et al [21] concludes that the relationship between econometric methods and related location theories is relatively weak concerning the relocation of pollution-causing enterprises. In their estimation, an increasing number of scholars will study the relocation of pollution-causing enterprises after the appearance of a new data collection strategy and solution to the problem of data sources.…”