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Selected Works of Joshua Drucker
Unpublished Paper
Trends in regional industrial concentration in the United States.
Center for Economic Studies, United States Census Bureau (2009)
  • Joshua Drucker, University of Illinois at Chicago
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Abstract

In a seminal article, Benjamin Chinitz (1961) raises the question of the effects that industry size,
structure, and economic diversification may have on firm performance and regional economies.
His line of inquiry suggests a related but conceptually distinct issue: how does the extent to
which a industry is regionally dominated—concentrated locally in a single or small number of
firms—impact the local performance of that industry? This question has received little attention,
principally because accurately measuring industrial concentration at the regional scale requires
firm-level information. This paper makes use of confidential plant- and firm-level manufacturing
data to explore patterns of industrial concentration in the United States at the regional scale.
Regional analogues of concentration ratios and other measures commonly used in the aspatial
industrial organization literature indicate the extent to which manufacturing activity is
concentrated in a small number of firms. Both the manufacturing sector as a whole and major
manufacturing industry sectors are examined in order to determine the extent of industrial
concentration in the continental United States, to explore changes over time in geographic
patterns of concentration, and to investigate associations between industrial concentration and
employment growth at the regional scale. Implications for understanding regional growth and for
devising regional economic development policy are discussed.

Keywords
  • industrial structure,
  • manufacturing,
  • plant size,
  • employment
Disciplines
Publication Date
2009
Citation Information
Joshua Drucker. "Trends in regional industrial concentration in the United States." Center for Economic Studies, United States Census Bureau (2009)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jdrucker/30/