La concentración territorial de las empresas industriales: un estudio sobre la unidad geogr fica de an lisis mediante técnicas de econometría espacial

There is clear evidence about the high level of industrial concentration along the Spanish geography. This paper has the aim to analyse the suitability of traditionally used geographical concentration indexes and to discover which is the correct administrative unit in this type of analysis. A new database with information about employment in local units and manufacturing sectors is used. It is proved that the results for the industrial concentration indexes are very different if they are calculated for provinces or for municipalities. This evidence arises the question about the most suitable size of the unit of analysis. We consider that the proper unit analysis that represents the real economic area has to be in the middle of the province and the municipality. Within the Spatial Econometrics framework, the spatial dependence indexes allow testing the existence of groups of municipalities in which a high industrial manufacturing concentration is detected. The results indicate that for some of the manufacturing analysed activities the concentration goes farther the administrative borders of the municipality.