The influence of geographical concentration and structural characteristics on the survival chance of the firms : ERSA (Barcelona, 2011)

The objective of this work is to evaluate the risk of business mortality. Considering a sample of over 11,741 firms in the textile-clothing sector, the influence that factors such as age, geographic density (district effect) and the principal productive activity (subsector effect) have on Spanish textile firms survival were studied using the postulates of the theory of Population Ecology of Organizations (Hannan and Freeman, 1977). From a theoretical-practical point of view this industry has been found to be especially relevant for this type of study for at least three reasons: 1) its importance in terms of employment and occupation in the EU, 2) as the increase in globalization has resulted in extraordinary failure rates of its firms and 3) because the firms tend to concentrate geographically around cluster type populations or industrial districts. The results obtained from the analysis suggest that the risk of business mortality is increased by some risk factors relative to the structural characteristics of the firms (younger firms and specialization in low-tech activities), and under determined locational circumstances.