A Note on New Measures of Agglomeration and Specialization

Most measures and indexes of industrial agglomeration, concentration and specialization are variations of the Gini’s index and may be limited in scope and structure. Rarely, if ever, they include any reference to territorial dimensions and tend to be measures of volumes adjusted for the task at end. They do not embody any information relative to the industrial density and size of the analyzed regions. Alternatively some authors use just density as a measure of agglomeration ignoring the re- lated dimensionalities of volume and territorial size. These shortcomings may bring about both di¢ culties in interpreting results and distorted pictures about the actual industrial regional structure of an area. Regional dimensionality is particularly relevant for researchers focus- ing on analytical aspects connected with agglomeration and concentra- tion. The present paper introduces measures of agglomeration, concen- tration and specialization encompassing information about volume, den- sity and region dimensionality. Such an index is built on simple heuristic notion of industrial mass and would provide a more reliable, accurate and ‡exible instrument than previous measures.