Cluster Policies and Firm Selection: Evidence from France

Lionel Fontagné (1, 2, 3, 4) , Pamina Koenig (2, 5, 6) , Florian Mayneris (7, 8) , Sandra Poncet (2, 4)

1 CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 Department of Economics
4 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
5 PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
6 CREAM - Centre de Recherche en Economie Appliquée à la Mondialisation
7 UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain
8 CORE - Center of Operation Research and Econometrics [Louvain]

In this paper, we shed light on the selection of the benefi ciaries from the French competitiveness cluster policy which was launched in 2005 and extended to 2012. We disentangle the selection and self-selection eff ects, as emphasized in the theoretical literature on regional and industrial policy. Our main conclusion is that winners were (self-)selected at both steps of the procedure, and that this holds for the three cluster types: worldwide clusters , potentially worldwide clusters and national clusters . We thus provide a methodology which allows us to contrast the e ffective outcomes of the selection process and the official objectives of cluster policies in terms of targeting, and which thus helps in their econometric evaluation.

Mots clés: Competitiveness; clusters; international trade; fi rm selection

Domaines: Economies et finances

Lionel Fontagné, Pamina Koenig, Florian Mayneris, Sandra Poncet. Cluster Policies and Firm Selection: Evidence from France. Journal of Regional Science, 2013, 53 (5), pp.897-922. ⟨10.1111/jors.12050⟩. ⟨hal-00975554⟩