| Popis: |
Industrial districts are made up of numerous firms or industries interacting in myriad ways. We create and study a model of trade and service interactions in an industrial district, and then extend it to investigate the effect of both positive (mutualistic) and negative (competitive) non-trade interactions on the behaviour of two different types of industrial district—Marshallian and hub-and-spoke. In particular we study whether the structure of the district, or the positioning of the relationships, makes a difference to the outcome for the district as a whole. We find that both these aspects make a difference. For instance, in both Marshallian and hub-and-spoke districts a competitive relationship between firms that are directly linked by trade has a stronger effect than competition between firms that are not. On the other hand in a Marshallian district it is possible to make the district more ‘egalitarian’ by adding a mutualistic relationship between suppliers or between intermediary firms, but this effect is not seen in hub-and-spoke districts. We highlight for further investigation a hypothesis suggested by our results that the effects of mutualism on an industrial district are more pronounced than those of competition. |
