IDENTIFICATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL DISTRICTS: THE CASE OF SPAIN

In recent years, several contributions have been focused on a new sort of productive systems that share some characteristics with Marshallian industrial districts. These contributions have analysed the competitiveness of these new areas and how have been promoted by policy makers. In this line, the Marshallian concept of industrial district has been increasingly related to high technology and innovation in order to analysis technological districts or clusters. The aim of this research is to show how these new areas have characteristics are not similar to those shown by traditional industrial districts. Therefore, framework and techniques for analysis that have been traditionally used for industrial districts must be adapted for identifying technological districts. Specifically, some reflections about the framework analysis of sector and spatial units are introduced in the first part of this research as well as those techniques that can be useful to identify and analyse technological districts. Next, the analysis is focused on the identification of technological districts in Spain. A multivariate analysis will be applied to calculate a synthetic index that will be used to identify those areas with a high degree of specialization in high and medium technology activities. This synthetic index will collect data about those technological activities that are involved not only in manufacturing but also in activities of innovation and R&D. Until now, there have been not many attempts to identify technological clusters through the application of quantitative methodologies; therefore, the purpose of this research is to contribute to the enhancement of knowledge about these areas in Spain. Keywords: technological districts, clusters, location, spatial agglomerations.

The new economy in Spain: a regional analysis

There is no enough evidence about the effects of the new information and communication technologies (ICT) in Spain and how these ICT cause differences between regions. So, the aim of this work is to analyze the regional disparities relative to the new economy in Spain. In the first part of this work, we will review the literature about the concept and measure of the new economy and the problems derived from the high number of definitions about it that difficult an homogeneous analysis. Despite of the several definitions, new economy refers, basically, to an economic development based in Internet and the technologic knowledge as the main inputs. Secondly, we review the empirical evidence about the location factors associated with the new economy. As we highlight in this section, the main conclusion is the complexity of the location dynamic related with the new economy because the results of the empirical studies range from the spatial concentration to the spatial dispersion. In the third section, we analyze the methodology and the empirical results. We collect regional indicators of the new economy in Spain trying to establish if the growth of the new economy in Spain has generated a high spatial concentration. But measuring the new economy at the regional level is even more difficult than it is at the national level because many of the most useful data tend to be nationally oriented. Therefore, it will be used a statistical database with the 28 regional indicators. The 28 indicators in this database are divided into 4 categories about the new economy: ICT industry, ICT services, the knowledge society and the information society. Firstly, we analyse the spatial concentration of the new economy variables in the Spanish territory with the aim of comparing the spatial concentration of the new economy with the spatial concentration of the economic activity. Next, we will construct a composite indicator that will give us the information about the relative position of a region in the new economy in order to find a variable that reflects the regional development of the new economy. Also, to compare the new economy indicator with the conventional economy it will be used the GDP per capita. As a preliminary result we find that the regional disparities in economic growth are more reduced than the regional disparities in the development of the new economy. So, the spatial concentration of the new economy is higher than the spatial concentration of the conventional economic activity. Also, a second preliminary conclusion is the relationship between a high economic development and a high level of the new economy. Finally, we conclude with an exposition of the main conclusions highlighting that the Internet and the ICT are an important progress instruments but can generate a growing of the regional disparities. Therefore, the role of the public sector promoting the introduction and development of the information and knowledge society, specially, in the regions with a low position in the new economy characteristics is essential.

THE INDUSTRY LOCATION IN SPAIN - NEW METHODS FOR MEASURING INDUSTRIAL AGGLOMERATION

A range of quantitative techniques have been employed by researchers in economic geography and other social science disciplines to measure and, spatially, define agglomerations of industrial activity. However, the application of these techniques in the literature results in a low consistency level. Because of this, new quantitative techniques have introduced solutions to solve the problems founded in the location’s analysis. One of these problems is the discrimination between geographic concentration arising from individual plants locating near to each other and that due to the concentration in an industrial structure. A relevant limitation of traditional location indexes is the absence of data about the differences in the size distribution of firms between geographic units. Recent papers by Ellison and Glaeser (1997) and Maurel and Sédillot (1999) have proposed indexes designed to measure agglomerations or geographic concentrations in excess of that which would be expected given industrial concentrations. These measures are all based on the distribution of activity over discrete geographic units. Another problem is the use of arbitrary cut-off values for determining what level of industrial specialization defines an agglomeration. O’Donoghue and Gleave (2004) have proposed a new measure, the ‘standardized location quotient (SLQ)’, which recognizes agglomerations as being comprised of locations with statistically significant location quotient values for the industry/activity under analysis. Other questions that appear when constructing these measures are the specification of the regional division’s level and the suitable use of administrative territorial units. New quantitative techniques of spatial econometrics solve this question. The use of a spatial autocorrelation indexes will allow us to know if the location of a concrete economic activity in a municipality is influenced by the location of the same activity in other neighbouring municipalities. We use global spatial autocorrelation statistics as I Moran Index (Moran, 1948) and Local Measures of Spatial Autocorrelation (LISA). The cluster map (LISA map) shows the significant locations by type of association. With LISA map, we measure geographic concentration of employment in industry clusters by detecting spatial association patterns in administrative areas (in this case, municipalities). In the empirical analysis the municipality, the micro level of administrative regions (NUTS5) in Spain, will be used as territorial unit. The data will be provided by the Industrial Register (Ministry of Industry, 2000) that contains information about the population of production plants in Spain at two and/or three-digit industry level. This includes the location of the plant (given by municipality), the plant’s three-digit industrial classification and the number of employees. So, the objective of this work will be to identify spatial agglomerations within the Spanish industrial sectors using all these new contributions to the spatial analysis and, as a secondary objective, to compare the difference of the results obtained with each quantitative technique. The results will offer a wide view of the geographic concentration and agglomeration of industrial activity in Spain.

Identification of the local productive systems in Spain: a new approach

In the last two decades there have been significant spatial changes influenced by the industrial re-organization processes. And the studies made about these changes have defined new forms of territorial distribution. One of these new forms appears because of territorial diffusion of the economic activity due to a flexible decentralization process and, simultaneously, the endogenous development in a geographical area. This industrial organization model has promoted the development of local geographic areas composed by a high number of small enterprises of the same industrial sector. These areas receive the denomination of local productive systems (LPS). However, these local areas can’t be identified with the administrative areas in which is divided a province or a region. In fact, a LPS can be defined as a certain number of towns, near geographically, with a high concentration of the same industrial activity, but not necessary located in the same municipality. The aim of this work is to identify and locate the LPS in the Spanish territory. So, the first phase will be to identify the industrial sectors which are highly concentrated in certain areas using the municipality which is the basic administrative unit in Spain. For that purpose it will be used indicators of the geographical concentration of the economic activity as the Gini index and the location coefficient. Also, the use of a spatial autocorrelation index will allow us to know if the location of a concrete economic activity in a municipality is influenced by the location of the same activity in other neighbouring municipalities. With this index it will be possible to identify the industrial sectors which are highly concentrated in one territorial area that could be different from the administrative division of the territory, being an agglomeration of municipalities with a high specialization in one industrial sector. In a second phase, the objective will be to establish the geographic areas with a high concentration level in one industrial sector. Next, we will try to delimitate the territorial boundaries in order to identify the LPS using the methodology developed by Frederic Lainé for the French case. In this methodology the characterization of the municipalities is based in four basic requirements for a concrete sector: number of establishments, employment, industrial density and specialization degree. The results, that is, the number of municipalities that fulfil these requirements, will be aggregated in order to search for the municipalities which are specialized in one industrial sector and are geographically nearby from other municipalities with the same industrial specialization. Finally, we will obtain a new spatial unit different from the administrative units traditionally used. These new units will represent a local production systems composed of several nearby municipalities specialized in the same industrial sector. In our opinion, this new spatial unit would represent better the idea of economic unit, more accurate than the administrative-political division. Industrial specialization.

The location of the Spanish technological centers

The Technological Centers have been created with the aim of being a supplier of different R&D's activities and services for those entreprises with a lack of material and financial resources to develop by themselves an innovation process. In most cases, these enterprises are SME's (Small and Medium Enterprises) placed in the area of influence of each Technological Center. Usually, these Technological Centers are located in strategic areas with specific characteristics like to be closed to the SME's (one of the valued highly characteristics by them), a good access to qualified staff and the existence of a good innovation environment. So, this situation has promoted that many decisions about the creation of the Technological Centers have depended on the distance between these and the SME's-clients. The purpose of this work will be the study about where are stablished the Spanish Technological Centers and it will be analysed if the metropolitan areas have been a key factor in their creation. First, we will analyse the spacial distribution of the possible SME'sclients of the Technological Centers (the Spanish industry). We also study how the Technological Centers are integrated in the national and regional goverment Technological Policy.

Identification and Analysis of the Industrial Districts in Spain: A Quantitative Approach

The identification and analysis of the industrial districts in Spain using a quantitative approach is the aim of this research. In the first part, the industrial districts are identified applying the methodology developed by the Italian Statistics Institute (ISTAT). This identification is possible due to the availability of information about the local labour markets; these have been estimated with labour mobility data between municipalities and the industrial data used to analyse the location of the Spanish industry comes from the Industrial Register published by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce. This statistical source classifies the different industrial activities in 23 sectors. In the second part, the characteristics of the, previously identified, industrial districts are quantitatively analysed and the results are compared with those obtained in other similar researches developed in Spain and Italy. Some of the characteristics that will be analysed are the relevance of the industrial districts for the Spanish industry (in a national, sectorial and regional level), the industrialization degree, the sectorial specialization level or the predominance of small and medium enterprises in the whole industry or by sectors. Finally, with the quantitative results, a typology of the industrial districts in Spain will be constructed, that could be used in a further analysis based in qualitative techniques.

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Measurement of the correlation between the polar angles of leptons from top quark decays in the helicity basis at √s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

A measurement of the correlations between the polar angles of leptons from the decay of pair-produced t and t̄ quarks in the helicity basis is reported, using proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.6  fb−¹ at a center-of-mass energy of √s = 7  TeV collected during 2011. Candidate events are selected in the dilepton topology with large missing transverse momentum and at least two jets. The angles θ1 and θ2 between the charged leptons and the direction of motion of the parent quarks in the tt̄ rest frame are sensitive to the spin information, and the distribution of cosθ1 ⋅ cosθ2 is sensitive to the spin correlation between the t and t̄ quarks. The distribution is unfolded to parton level and compared to the next-to-leading order prediction. A good agreement is observed

Search for massive, long-lived particles using multitrack displaced vertices or displaced lepton pairs in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Many extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of heavy particles with long lifetimes. This article presents the results of a search for events containing at least one long-lived particle that decays at a significant distance from its production point into two leptons or into five or more charged particles. This analysis uses a data sample of proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3  fb−1 collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. No events are observed in any of the signal regions, and limits are set on model parameters within supersymmetric scenarios involving R-parity violation, split supersymmetry, and gauge mediation. In some of the search channels, the trigger and search strategy are based only on the decay products of individual long-lived particles, irrespective of the rest of the event. In these cases, the provided limits can easily be reinterpreted in different scenarios

Measurement of the CP-violating phase ϕs and the Bs0 meson decay width difference with Bs0 → J/ψϕ decays in ATLAS

A measurement of the Bs0 decay parameters in the Bs0 → J/ψϕ channel using an integrated luminosity of 14.3 fb−1 collected by the ATLAS detector from 8 TeV pp collisions at the LHC is presented. The measured parameters include the CP -violating phase ϕs, the decay width Γs and the width difference between the mass eigenstates ΔΓs. The values measured for the physical parameters are statistically combined with those from 4.9 fb−1 of 7 TeV data, leading to the following: ϕ s =−0.090±0.078(stat.)±0.041(syst.)rad ΔΓ s =0.085±0.011(stat.)±0.007(syst.)ps −1 Γ s =0.675±0.003(stat.)±0.003(syst.)ps −1 In the analysis the parameter ΔΓs is constrained to be positive. Results for ϕs and ΔΓs are also presented as 68% and 95% likelihood contours in the ϕs-ΔΓs plane. Also measured in this decay channel are the transversity amplitudes and corresponding strong phases. All measurements are in agreement with the Standard Model predictions