Using entropy measures to disentangle regional from national localization patterns

Localization of economic activities is a manifestation of two closely-related economic phenomena: the specialization of geographical units and the spatial concentration of industries. Nonetheless, the direction of changes in concentration and specialization, across national boundaries, may differ from those occurring within countries. Combining a regional approach with an international perspective, the paper introduces an entropy index of overall localization that allows specialization to be conceptualized as the mirror image of concentration, and also focuses attention on the possible divergence in agglomeration patterns at the different spatial scales

A framework for modelling economic regional location processes under uncertainty

This paper deals with the theoretical analysis of the spatial concentration and localization of firms and employees over a set of regions. In particular, it provides a simple site-selection theoretical model to describe the probabilistic framework of the location patterns. The adopted quantitative tool is the stochastic theory of urns. The model moves from the empirical evidence of the deviation of the spatial location of companies from the uniform distribution and of employees from the distribution of firms. Factors leading to such deviations are taken into consideration. Specifically, we formalize a decision problem grounded on the economic attributes of the regions and also on the distribution of the existing firms and employees in the territory. To our purpose, the site-selection model is presented as a stepwise process

The Balassa index Meets the dissimilarity Theil index: a decomposition methodology for location studies

It is well known that the broad concept of localisation has two connotations, namely, regional specialisation and industrial concentration. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce an entropy index of overall localisation suitable to conceptualise specialisation and concentration as the two sides of the same medal in a nested geographical perspective. The system of dissimilarity entropy measures is potentially applicable to the assessment of the spatial distribution of several economic phenomena when a twofold geographical level of analysis is considered. In the specific case, the decomposition provides an accurate method to quantify the cross-country divergence in localisation from the agglomeration within countries

Tipologie di sviluppo territoriale nell\u2019industria leggera: uno sguardo al Brasile

This article depicts the main Brazilian clusters specialized in traditional industries in a way that accounts for two discriminating variables usually treated as closely intertwined features: the extent of Marshallian external economies and the development of institutions devoted to local governance. The inquiry into different case studies suggests that extensive agglomeration economies do not prevent from the failure of collective actions clarifying that the presence of agglomeration economies does not necessarily imply an efficient local governance. Instead, some embryonic clusters are endowed with those social traits- such as cooperation and trust among final producers- and institutional assets usually associated to the industrial district model. Since the two system characteristics identified \u2013 institutional density and internal complexity- may well be detached, a typology of clusters is introduced as a guide for local economic policy