Spatial Effects in Industrial Location Choices: Industry Characteristics and Urban Accessibility

Abstract

In this paper we study how neighbourhood‐related spillovers affect location choices of manufacturing firms at a local level. A spatial Dirichlet‐multinomial regression model is applied to 90,000 new establishments of the Spanish Mediterranean Axis. Empirical findings show that spatial spillovers play an important role, together with traditional explanatory factors, in driving decisions of companies. Their size and scope depends on two main issues, the specific characteristics of the manufacturing industry the firm belongs to, and the accessibility of the urban environment where the firm is located.

Spatial dependence and heterogeneity in the location processes of new high‐tech firms in Nanjing, China

“…This is mainly because it might be too complex to estimate and interpret the spatial lag terms. In addition, it also helps to compare with the results of most studies that only consider the spatial lags of independent variables (Autant‐Bernard ; Alamá‐Sabater et al ; Artal‐Tur et al ). It is generally assumed that all spatially weighted independent variables share one common spatial parameter in most studies such as Alamá‐Sabater et al () and Artal‐Tur et al ().…”

“…Alamá‐Sabater et al () investigated the role played by spatial spillovers in location choices of firms in the Spanish region of Murcia. Artal‐Tur et al () studied how the location decisions of manufacturing firms are influenced by inter‐site spillovers at a local scale and found that spatial spillovers do play an important role. Daniel and Arauzo‐Carod () analysed the role of spatial effects in the industrial location process in Catalonia, Spain.…”

“…Recent progress in spatial econometric techniques has been achieved mainly based on the two models. The newly‐developed approaches which aim to estimate different kinds of spatial effects include the spatial conditional logit model (Alamá‐Sabater et al ), the spatial Dirichlet‐multinomial regression model (Artal‐Tur et al ) and the spatial multivariate model (Bhat et al ). Recall that the major purpose of this paper is to investigate the presence of spatial dependence and heterogeneity in the impacts of site‐specific attributes on high‐tech firm location.…”

New Insights in Industrial Location

“…Whereas Artal‐Tur et al . ( ) and Risselada et al . () estimate discrete choice models, Cieślik () and Martínez et al .…”

“…In particular, the papers included in this special issue analyse questions related to the regional determinants of foreign direct investments (Cieślik ), the role of spatial spillovers (Artal‐Tur et al . , Martínez et al . ), and the micropolitan analysis of relocations (Risselada et al ., ).…”