A Probabilistic Modeling Approach to the Detection of Industrial Agglomerations: Methodological Framework

Tomoya Mori and Tony E. Smith ()
Additional contact information
Tony E. Smith: Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania

No 777, KIER Working Papers from Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: Dating from the seminal work of Ellison and Glaeser [11] in 1997, a wealth of evidence for the ubiquity of industrial agglomerations has been published. However, most of these results are based on analyses of single (scalar) indices of agglomeration. Hence it is not surprising that industries deemed to be similar by such indices can often exhibit very different patterns of agglomeration - with respect to the number, size, and spatial extent of individual agglomerations. The purpose of this paper is thus to propose a more detailed spatial analysis of agglomeration in terms of multiple-cluster patterns, where each cluster represents a (roughly) convex set of contiguous regions within which the density of establishments is relatively uniform. The key idea is to develop a simple probability model of multiple clusters, called cluster schemes, and then to seek a “best†cluster scheme for each industry by employing a standard model-selection criterion. Our ultimate objective is to provide a richer characterization of spatial agglomeration patterns that will allow more meaningful comparisons of these patterns across industries.

Keywords: Industrial Agglomeration; Cluster Analysis; Geodesic Convexity; Bayesian Information Criterion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C49 L60 R12 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP777.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kyo:wpaper:777

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in KIER Working Papers from Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Makoto Watanabe ().