Regional concentration in the United States and Europe: Who follows whom?

Regional Concentration in the United States and Europe: Who Follows Whom? - This paper investigates differences in the regional concentration of manufacturing in the United States and in Europe. We use a new data set (value added and employment, comparable number of regions in the United States and Europe, manufacturing disaggregated into 10 sectors, period 1987-1995/98). The main result is that the level of regional concentration is indeed higher in the United States, although the difference is much less than suggested by past studies, which relied on employment figures. Regional concentration has been declining over time, faster in the United States thus converging to the lower European level from above. In Europe, this tendency has been specifically evident since the installment of the Single Market Program.