Abstract
This paper examines the existence of regional agglomerations of manufacturing, service and creative industries, the relationship between these industries and the wealth of regions and their industrial structure. Through an analysis of 250 European regions, three important conclusions can be inferred from the results obtained in this paper. The first is that creative industries play an important role in the wealth of a region. The second is that the most creative regions are characterized by having more high-tech manufacturing industries than the rest of the regions although the number of low-tech manufacturing firms is similar. Lastly, the industrial structure of each region has a greater influence on regional wealth than the existence of industrial agglomerations. The importance of this paper resides in the fact that up until now no analysis has demonstrated that creative industries are the most important industries in regional wealth.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Ministry of Science and Innovation and Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) for financially supporting this research (ECO2010-17318 MICINN Project and Research Project n. 2677-UPV).
Notes
The Amadeus database was also used as a last resort to add to the number of firms in some subsectors where the SBS and REA did not offer coverage.
Several functional forms were tested based on a more general function and taking into account non-linearities in the specification. However, the linear form in levels proved to be the most suitable.