This paper provides two things. First, it gives an overview on the existing top-down methods for the identification of clusters (Section II). Second, it presents a new method that has been recently introduced by Scholl and Brenner (2016) in a basic version. However, the existing version of this...

A stochastic model of the evolution of the firm population in a region and industry is developed. This model is used to make predictions about the expected probability distribution of the firm number in regions and their dynamics. Data on the spatial distribution of firms in Germany is used to...