Industrial movement, spatial association and functional linkages

Lever W. F. (1972) Industrial movement, spatial association and functional linkage. Reg. Studies 6, 371–384. Much of the Government's distribution of industry policy depends upon the availability of mobile industry which can be diverted from the congested South East and Midlands to the regions of high unemployment. Recent work has suggested that external economies, particularly those associated with access to suppliers of inputs and customers, may be more important than regional planners assume. The paper uses correlation coefficients to measure the degree of spatial association between pairs of industries and input-output tables to measure the importance of functional linkages between pairs of industries. Functional linkages are found to have a strong locational effect even upon such modern expanding industries as engineering, metal goods industries and motor vehicle manufacture. The paper concludes that there is an important distinction to be drawn for regional employment policies between the expanding metal and engineering industries of the West Midlands and the expanding science-based industries of the London Metropolitan region.