Attractiveness and agglomeration of automotive industry in Morocco and Tunisia: A comparative analysis (In French)

The paper proposes a comparative analysis of the development of the automotive industry in Morocco and Tunisia. In its first part, it analyses the convergence in the forms of international integration, oriented towards a subcontracting towards European Union, which leads to competition and also complementarities between these two countries. The role of multinational firms and governmental policies is discussed. Location of these automotive activities is analyzed in Part 2 to evaluate the agglomeration factors and the limits of spatial concentration.Automotive industry - European Union - Regional integration - Mediterranean Area - Multinational Firms - Morocco - Tunisia

A comparative analysis of automobile parts trade exchange between France and Germany: crossing international economics and industrial dynamics (In French)

This paper proposes a new way for analysing the international trade of intermediaries good. We consider the case of automobile parts with the objective to cross analytic tools from international economics and industrial dynamics. Within the Economy of proximity framework, we propose a method for studying the international fragmentation of global value chain. We construct a typology for auto parts based on the modularity approach and we identify three types of parts: components, meso-components and macro-components. Then we study the evolution of trade for France and Germany for 20 parts during the period 2003/2008. Our main empirical conclusion is to stress that the situation of the German part industry is less favourable that we usually consider and that it is more and more dependant from eastern European countries. We conclude we some suggestions for improving this methodology.modularity; international trade; global value chain; automobile; France; Germany

Spatial dynamics of firms (In French)

This paper is a survey of the literature about the spatial dynamics of firms. In a first part, we discuss about the traditional theories of location. We review the insights of these theories but also their limits. In particular, we stress the necessity to organize a true dialog between the approaches focusing on firms\' organization, and those who are focusing on the territorial dimension. In other words, we stress that it is a necessity to cross Industrial dynamics and Regional science. In this perspective, the second part of the paper explores the contribution of the Economics of Proximities’ approach. After a presentation of the French school of proximity, we apply this framework to some key current issuesIndustry, Space, Location, Firm, Proximity