Michiel De Bok, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, Frank Van Oort, Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB) & Urban Research Centre Utrecht (URU), The Hague, The Netherlands, Mark Thissen, The Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research
, The Hague, The Netherlands
Empirical evidence for accessibility and agglomeration factors in relocation decisions of firms (assigned to theme
It is often argued that the spatial transaction costs that evolve from the firm’s activity contribute to the relocation decision of firms. The reasons for firm to relocate are changes in the costs and changes in the firm’s sensitivity to transport costs. It is evident that these transport costs are related to the quality of the transport infrastructure. More recently it is argued in the new economic geography that not only the quality of the infrastructure plays a role, but also the quality of the firm’s inputs and the amount of potential consumers in the firms surroundings. The total costs and benefits of a location are therefore determined by the actual spatial dependencies and the associated spatial transportation costs of firms. The aim of this research is to make an empirical contribution into the influence of transportation costs and agglomeration effects on the relocation behaviour of firms by analysing firm migration at the level of the individual firm. Discrete choice models are applied that describe the location decision of moving firms in a spatial disaggregated environment. Systematic choice sets are applied to account for supply restrictions and the choice context of each relocated firm. The models are estimated on an extensive revealed preference dataset with firm migration observations between 1996 and 2003 in The Netherlands. Besides accessibility attributes that describe the quality of the transport infrastructure, each location alternative is described with a variety of agglomeration attributes that try to reveal spatial advantages or disadvantages from the proximity of specific industrial clusters. The coordinates and the five digit SIC-code of each firm allow for the usage of disaggregated agglomeration attributes.
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(copyright Gunther Maier) |