Title
Regional concentration of knowledge-intensive business services in Europe
Date Issued
01 January 2014
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
University of Santiago de Compostela
Publisher(s)
Pion Limited
SAGE
Abstract
This paper analyses the location patterns of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in Europe in line with the most recent literature. Our main contribution is to provide new evidence about the location patterns of KIBS considering the European continent, as opposed to individual countries, as the unit of analysis. We first present the concentration and specialisation patterns of KIBS activities in Europe, including the variations that have occurred during the last few years. Second, we try to provide an explanation of KIBS regional specialisation patterns on the basis of the factors identified by the literature. The results suggest that KIBS activities are highly geographically concentrated in Europe. In this respect, capital cities, which have increasingly emerged as strongly specialized locations in services, play a central role in geography of KIBS. At the same time, there is also evidence of a tendency of sparse dispersal of KIBS throughout European regions. Overall, our results reinforce the importance of agglomeration externalities, market size, regional accessibility, regional knowledge base, and the institutional nature of the regional capital city. Finally, regarding changes in KIBS regional specialisation, we find that these are largely associated to changes in regional GDP.
Start page
1036
End page
1058
Volume
32
Issue
6
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Economía
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84919388155
Source
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy
ISSN of the container
0263774X
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus