Industry Clusters and Employment Outcomes in Washington State

Abstract

A widely used practice in state and local economic and workforce development is to identify and explicitly invest in strategic industry clusters. Economic theory suggests that industry clusters, defined as geographically concentrated groups of firms and supporting institutions in related industries, enhance industry productivity and regional prosperity, relative to nonclustered industries. This concept, although widely used, has been insufficiently evaluated. In particular, questions remain about the extent to which cluster strategies are associated with beneficial outcomes for employees in clustered industries. Using a population-wide panel of individual-level quarterly wage and industry data covering the period 2003-2010 for the state of Washington, this research measures the association of industry cluster membership with the employment status, wage levels, and wage growth rates of individual employees in counties in the state. The mixed results carry implications for strategic investments and job creation efforts by states and local governments across the United States.

Leveraging the potential of nature to meet net zero greenhouse gas emissions in Washington State

“…We chose to focus on the county scale because Washington counties are feasible units for analyzing industry clusters, or regionally concentrated groups of closely related industries that may fall in different business sectors but are closely linked by local commerce between them (Chrisinger, Fowler & Kleit, 2015). Regionalized climate solutions, including NCS, could be deployed within industry clusters to account for indirect and induced economic impacts as well as to create resilience for businesses involved.…”

The Dual Effects of Information Technology Clusters: Learning and Selection

“…9. Previous studies have defined clusters in the geographical scale of a metropolitan area (Combes et al, 2012), a state (Ellison, Glaeser, & Kerr, 2010), a county (Chrisinger, Fowler, & Kleit, 2015;Feser et al, 2008), or a subcounty area (De Silva & McComb, 2012;Wallsten, 2001). Each definition has advantages and disadvantages.…”

Characteristics of relationships, types and strategies in a Brazilian cluster

“…According to these authors, small businesses should develop regional relationships that may provide knowledge where their own resources can be limited. Some authors (Martin et al, 2013;Chrisinger et al, 2015) state that cluster agglomeration and internal policy can improve the survival probability in export markets. However, these authors highlight that in the context of an economic crisis, a cluster's advantages in the attempt to generate this effect seem to be neutralized.…”

“…The success of these agglomerations and industrial arrangements may occur based on the relationships. This is explained by the dynamics between companies, and their level of specialization and location begin to justify the good economic performance achieved by them when concentrated in a location, or region (Fitjar and Rodríguez-Pose, 2013;Brazinskas and Beinoravičius, 2014;Chrisinger et al, 2015). In this sense, literature presents studies on cluster typologies, which is how they are constituted.…”

“…These results may indicate that there is a low capacity for development of formal initiatives toward strategies specifically based on advantages related to a cluster's agglomeration. As mentioned by Martin et al (2013) and Chrisinger et al (2015) cluster agglomeration and internal policy can generate strategic advantages that may improve competitiveness.…”