Accessibility and Industrial Locationevidence from Spain

Zusammenfassung

This paper deals with location decisions of manufacturing firms in Spain. We analyse how agglomeration economies and, especially, transport accessibility influence location decisions of firms. During the 1990s there was an intense programme of high capacity road construction which improved accessibility to municipalities. We analyse the location decisions of firms at municipality level and in three industries. The main empirical contributions of this paper are the econometric techniques used (spatial econometrics models) and some of the explanatory variables (local added value, road accessibility, and the characteristics of firms in neighbouring municipalities). The results show that agglomeration economies (including road network improvements) are important in industrial location decision-making.