Essays on location patterns of creative industries
- Autores: Eva Coll Martínez
- Directores de la Tesis: Josep Maria Arauzo Carod (dir. tes.), Ana Isabel Moreno Monroy (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Rovira i Virgili ( España ) en 2018
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Miguel C. Manjón Antolín (presid.), Rafael Boix Doménech (secret.), Aurora A. C. Teixeira (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Economía y Empresa por la Universidad Rovira i Virgili
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The main object of the thesis is to analyse and identify which factors facilitate the implementation and growth of the creative industries at the local level. This thesis conceives creative industries as a set of economic activities that use creativity as main input and as a mechanism for getting over the challenges arising from a new economic context. Creative industries have been highlighted for their potential in terms of local economic growth, development and competitiveness. Moreover, the literature on the location patterns of creative industries suggests that these industries have a greater need for agglomeration than non-creative industries due to a set of features that characterise these industries – i.e., they are closely linked to aesthetics, symbolic values, the cultural path dependence of the territory as well as their working nature requiring constant explicit and tacit contact within formal and informal networks. However, the implications for policy focused on the agglomeration of creative industries need to be justified by analysing how different their location patterns are from the ones of other economic activities and by testing their potential in terms of economic dynamism and economic performance. In this context, this thesis contributes to the literature on creative industries by providing new and relevant empirical evidence about the location patterns of creative industries and by applying both traditional and innovative methodologies to analyse the agglomeration of these industries and its effects on the economy both at intra and inter-metropolitan level. Concretely, it is focuses on Catalonia, a Mediterranean region with a longstanding industrial tradition that has been redirected to a more knowledge and creative economy over the last fifteen years and, specially, its capital Barcelona have become into one of the most important creative hubs in Europe in terms of employment in creative industries. Because of all that, Catalonia turns into a perfect case to analyse the location behaviour of these industries and their impact on the local economy over these year.
The thesis is structured as follows. Second and third chapters provide an analysis at municipality level to determine the location determinants of creative industries as well as the effects of creative environments on economic dynamism. While fourth and five provide an intra-metropolitan analysis departing from an exhaustive analysis of the agglomeration patterns of creative industries in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) and finishing with an in-depth analysis of the effects of agglomeration economies on creative industries firms’ performance in the city of Barcelona. This structure leads to a better understanding of the location patterns of CIs from different geographical perspectives as well as empirical and exploratory techniques.
The second chapter of this thesis, which is already published in Environment and Planning A, aims to identify which are the location determinants of creative firms and compare those to non-creative firms ones. Concretely, it wonders whether the specialisation in creative industries should enhance the location of all kind of firms and if an unobservable creative milieu that favours the agglomeration of bohemians also favours the location of firms. The empirical application focuses on Catalan municipalities for the period 2002-2007. By using Count Data Models two main results are obtained. First, creative and non-creative firms share similar location factors and they are both positively influenced by the specialisation level of the creative industries in municipalities. The results also confirm that the same unobserved creative milieu that favours the existence of bohemians significantly influences firm entry.
The third chapter of this thesis investigates whether creative industries lead to new firm creation. Because of the potential endogeneity of the employment in creative industries, this paper relies on cultural associations and urban population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as sources of exogenous variation. The empirical application focuses on Catalan municipalities for the period 2002-2007. By making use of these historical instrumental variables (IV) for the first time in this literature, to best of my knowledge, results confirm creative industries’ potential for new firm creation. Furthermore, analysis of IV suggests that the intrinsic and historical personality defining the municipality – in terms of cultural associations – should explain the attraction of creative employment to the municipality and, at the same time, this should encourage the location of new firms.
The fourth chapter of the thesis, which is already published in Papers in Regional Science, provides a comprehensive intra-metropolitan analysis of the intensity and extent of the agglomeration and coagglomeration of creative industries within the MAB. To deal with methodological limitations arising from the use of geographically aggregated data and area-based methods, it makes use of geo-referenced data for firms located in the MAB in 2012 in order to calculate the relative distance-based M and m cumulative and density functions of agglomeration and coagglomeration. The results show that creative industries and non-creative industries have different agglomeration patterns. Specifically, it finds a high agglomeration of creative industries at short distances and a rapid distance decay of this agglomeration. This pattern of high levels of agglomeration at short distances and rapid decay holds for individual creative industries sectors. Regarding coagglomeration, on the one hand, symbolic-based creative sectors are more clearly coagglomerated than the other knowledge-based creative sectors.
The fifth chapter of this thesis analyses the spatial extent of agglomeration economies for the creative industries and its relationship with firms’ performance. Concretely, this paper tries to control for market potential effects in order to identify the actual role of the specific characteristics (i.e., networking opportunities, cultural amenities, place-image) traditionally explaining the spatial concentration of creative industries in the city centre. To do that it uses micro-geographic data of firms located in Barcelona between 2006 and 2015. Agglomeration measures and proximity to urban amenities are computed by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The results show that for the symbolic-based creative industries firms localisation economies have positive effects on total factor productivity (TFP) at shorter distances (less than 250 metres) and they quickly disappear with distance, while for the two other knowledge-based creative industries (i.e., synthetic and analytical) localisation economies seem to be less relevant. This suggests that benefits of being in a better neighbourhood seem not only to be associated to market potential. Moreover, creative industries’ productivity is considerably associated to proximity to specialised human capital and to co-working spaces.
Main findings of this thesis show that despite the fact that creative industries location determinants are not so different from those of non-creative industries, the specific nature of these industries and their greater need for agglomeration is confirmed, especially for symbolic-based creative industries. Moreover, this thesis confirms the positive association between creative industries and economic growth – in terms of firm creation or productivity. Yet, it also suggests that the ability to attract creative activities and employment to an area strongly depends on the existing creative milieu and the cultural path dependence of the area.
Based on the assumption that creative and cultural activities have great potential in terms of, for example, urban regeneration, competitiveness, city marketing, and magnet for the most skilled and innovative social and economic agents results of this project allow to have a series of recommendations to be developed by policy makers willing to support the diversification of economic activity in local economies for the purpose of enhancing their competitiveness in an economic and social context increasingly global.
Concretely, main results suggest that 1) policy makers should focus on providing and improving these urban features and to increase human-scale interaction and networking possibilities enhancing the activity of these industries; 2) local authorities pursuing a diversified economic strategy should encourage social and cultural interaction that can engender a particular creative milieu (a vibrant environment fostering creativity) that can give them comparative advantages once traditional location factors have been satisfied. These policies aiming to to develop a creative city and attract creative industries strongly depend on urban history and the cultural path dependence of each city. Thus, the actual role of public institutions should be reshaped in accordance; 3) policies focusing on the transformation of local economies into more diversified economy oriented to knowledge and creativity should take into account that Catalan municipalities should not compete with Barcelona, but rather they must collaborate. In the same way, these policies should not hold for all municipalities, but must be adapted to their own characteristics. Moreover, the success of policies aiming to attract creative industries should take into account differences among creative industries; and 4) policies that focus on CIs as urban regeneration and socio-economic polarisation tools should bear in mind that the benefits of attracting creative talents and firms may not be easily spread to peripheral areas
