The Spatial Agglomeration of Economic Activities from the Perspective of Corporation Demographics

Abstract

In the past few years the spatial shift of economic activities has become a focus of interest for several reasons in Hungary. Within economics, it is conventionally location theories that are concerned about the issue of spatiality and seek an answer to the question: which point of space would offer suitable or optimal conditions for the operation of an enterprise for a given activity. Each of the three classical location theories can perfectly model the spatial decentralisation of the economy; however, due to their company-centred - micro level - approach, they cannot or can only with restrictions model a comprehensive process. A population-centred - corporation demographics - approach seems a more suitable method to apply, because it allows for a more general model, which can grasp the driving forces and constraints of economic suburbanisation. This approach, although used in more and more researches in English, and lately, even in French and Spanish speaking areas, has received scant attention in Hungary. The theoretical framework for building up the model is based on the corporation demographics approach, therefore, we examine how the number of companies changed and what factors influenced the change with particular attention paid to spatial and neighbourhood influences.