Clusters de productividad en el Valle del Ebro

Abstract

n this work we analyse the spatial concentration of firms from the industrial and service sectors in the Ebro Valley, in relation to their productivity level. We use data for the period 1996 to 2009. The results allow to evaluate the impact of socio-economic and geographic aspects of the Ebro Valley on productivity, known as spatial externalities. Results show a positive strong correlation among size of municipality, density and productivity. In this sense, we can talk about a capital effect: the capital of the province presents better probability of being involved in a high productivity cluster. Among them, the cases of Barcelona, Zaragoza, Pamplona, Lleida or Girona are remarkable. Other factors with a positive effect on productivity concentration are the following: i) the environment attractiveness, with a strong preference for the coast; ii) the accessibility to communication infrastructures such as the A2 highway; iii) diversity, understood as the existence, in the proximity, of other firms belonging to different and complementaty activity sectors; iv) specialization, understood as the existence, in the proximity, of other firms belonging to its same activity sector; v) size of firms; vi) competence among firms at a local level. Factors that negatively affect the concentration of productivity are problems of accessibility difficulty, low demographic pressure and technological disadvantages.