Regional concentration and dynamics of fast-growing industries in Baden-Württemberg and Israel

Fast-growing industries are regarded as providing an above-average contribution to production, employment and innovation. Due to necessary knowledge spillovers and a high product innovation rate, these industries are expected to have a locational bias towards central, metropolitan regions guaranteering a risk- and uncertainty-minimizing industrial atmosphere. Using statistical data on the regional distribution and composition of fast-growing industrial branches in Baden-Württemberg and Israel, it is the objective of this paper to analyze the spatial distribution process of fast-growing industries and to answer the question if also non-metropolitan regions provide favourable location conditions which could be made the starting point for innovation-oriented regional development strategies. Based on different methods of regional analysis, our results indicate that although the highest share of fast-growing industrial branches can still be found in central regions, spatial dispersion towards intermediate and peripheral regions occurred between the late 1980s and early 1990s in Israel as well as Baden-Württemberg. The decentralization process makes it clear that these industries can be an important target group for desparity-reucing regional policy.