The Impact of Agglomeration on the Performance of Shanghai’s Textile Industry
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chen, Hsuan-Ling
Abstract
China is the world’s major textile manufacturing producer. The spatial distribution of firms are discernibly concentrated on the east coast, with the greatest concentration occurring in Shanghai. As a traditional industry, would agglomeration effects generated in the textile industry as in the technology industry? This paper employs the spatial analysis method to observe the impact of agglomeration on the performance of firms. The scope of the study includes 1925 textile firms in Shanghai in 2007. The research first locates the position of textile firms by spatial analysis software such as Google Earth and uses the number of adjacent firms within 5km radius as cluster variable. Spatial-environmental factors are also considered. The empirical result indicates the substantial effect agglomeration has on the textile industry. This paper further examines how agglomeration effects on profitability among different types of textile firms. Using social network analysis, the textile industry is categorized into 5 types according to the manufacturing process. Thereafter, giving different weight by their correlations to exploit clustering factors. The empirical result reveals that clustering within the same category enhances the firm’s performance, whereas clustering across different categories shows the opposite.
Subjects
textile
agglomeration
spatial analysis
social network analysis
performance
Type
thesis