Autoren: Alecke, B., Alsleben, C., Scharr, F., Untiedt, G. (2008)

Hrsg.: Blien, U., Maier, G.: The economics of regional clusters. Networks, technology and policy New Horizons in Regional Science, S. 209-233

The aim of this paper is to explore the geographic concentration of economic sectors in Germany with the help of Ellison and Glaeser’s (1997) concentration index. We thereby add to previous empirical work measuring geographic concentration in other countries using the EG index and plant level employment data. However, whereas the existing empirical evidence is confined to agglomeration in manufacturing industries, our data encompasses agricultural and service sectors as well. Thus, we are able to give a much more complete picture of the degree of geographic concentration in the overall economy. The questions we ask are (I) are location decisions of plants in the same sector really correlated? or, in other words, is their extent of geographic concentration greater than what would be expected to arise randomly? and (II) what magnitude and what patterns of geographic concentration do sectors reveal?