Concentration of Economic Activity: An Analytical Framework

Olga Alonso-Villar (1) , Coral del Río (2)

1 Departamento de Economía Aplicada
2 Economía Aplicada

The goal of this paper is to offer an analytical framework within which relative concentration, including both the concentration of each sector and aggregate concentration, can be analyzed. By borrowing properties from the literature on income inequality and segregation and adapting them to a location context, this paper characterizes the generalized entropy family of concentration indexes proposed by Brülhart and Traeger (2005) and the L-index proposed by Cutrini (2009). In addition, it offers other measures taken from the segregation literature. All these measures are used to analyze the spatial patterns of manufacturing industries in Spain from 1977 to 2008, paying special attention to their technological intensity.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Domaines: Science politique

Olga Alonso-Villar, Coral del Río. Concentration of Economic Activity: An Analytical Framework. Regional Studies, 2011, pp.1. ⟨10.1080/00343404.2011.587796⟩. ⟨hal-00724178⟩