Economic Growth of Agglomerations and Geographic Concentration of Industries

Abstract

The vast majority of regions in West Germany, and the EU, have become more similar interms of per-capita income and productivity between 1980 and 2000. But a number of richareas - generally large agglomerations - have succeeded in departing from this trend ofconvergence. They are continuing to rise above the average productivity level. We examine whether this development can also be seen as due to changes in the spatial distribution of economic sectors. Knowledge-intensive services in particular are identified as industries that combine employment growth and further geographical concentration. Logistical and nonparametricregressions confirm a positive relation between the regional weight of sectors thatare continuing to concentrate geographically and the probability that this region will developahead of the general trend. We find that increasing localisation of fast growing industries is an important factor behind the changes in the spatial pattern of the economy.