This paper studies the spatial relationship between traditional banking services (Banks) and alternative financial service providers (AFSPs). The main objective is to test the so-called spatial void hypothesis that AFSPs tend to locate in markets where traditional banking services are...

We propose a statistical index of industrial localization based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence. This index is particularly well suited to cases where industrial data are available only at the regional level. Unlike existing regional-level indices, our index can be employed to test the...