Geographic concentration in U.S. manufacturing: evidence from the U.S. auto supplier industry

This paper investigates the issue of geographic concentration for the auto supplier industry by means of a large plant-level data set representing information for the year 1997. The industry continues to be highly spatially concentrated, even though its core region has changed over the last few decades and is now represented by the auto corridor, extending south from Michigan to Tennessee. Analysis at the more disaggregate level of individual parts suggests transportation costs, economies of scale and spillover effects as factors underlying the aggregate spatial pattern of the industry.