In the contemporary globalising knowledge-based economies, local clusters have become crucial elements of regional development, assuming a significant role in both academic and political fields. Although there is an intuitive awareness about the raising importance of the theoretical debate on...

In the paper, we test the effect of local development, regional and local policies on the location decisions and productivity of firms. Development indicators include local research and development activity or education while policy decisions used in this study encompass for example tax rates,...

Die Innovationskraft ist nicht nur für Nationen, sondern auch für Regionen eine elementare Voraussetzung für wirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit und Wohlstand. Gemessen an der FuE-Beschäftigung im verarbeitenden Gewerbe ist die regionale Konzentration seit 1998 unverändert hoch. Mit großem...

Innovation potential is not only an elementary precondition for economic efficiency and affluence for nations, but also for regions. Measured on R&D employment in the manufacturing industry, regional concentration has continued to remain high since 1998. The regions of Munich and Stuttgart lead...

There has much recent academic and policy interest in the issue of spatial clustering of economic activity, with most attention paid to the geographic concentration of high-tech industries. This paper describes patterns of geographic and industrial concentration in UK production industries at...

We examine whether discretionary government grants influence the location of new plants, and how effective these incentives are in the presence of agglomeration and urbanisation externalities. We find evidence that regional industrial structure affects the location of new entrants. Firms in more...

In the paper, we test the effect of local development, regional and local policies on the location decisions and productivity of firms. Development indicators include local research and development activity or education while policy decisions used in this study encompass for example tax rates,...

The distribution of economic activity over physical space - economic geography - is central to economic development. Geographical variations in industrialisation are the primary factor affecting geographical variations in incomes. And so, the question of what drives industry to locate in one...

Our study provides evidence for firms' evaluation of location quality. We use a 2004 survey of 6,000 East German firms that contained questions on the importance and assessment of 15 different location factors ranging from closeness to customers and suppliers, transport infrastructure, and...

This paper employs a homogenous firms database to investigate industry localization in European countries. More specifically, we compare, across industries and countries, the predictions of two of the most popular localization indices, i.e., the Ellison and Glaeser index (Ellison and Glaeser,...