Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

Industrial agglomeration is an old theme in economic geography and many studies have been devoted to this topic. But only few have empirically looked at the time trend of industrial agglomeration. This study measured agglomeration of U.S. industries over last 29 years and measurement results indicated that industrial clustering has occurred during the study period in all study industries without a common time trend shared amongst the study industries. The agglomeration levels then were plugged in to investigate causalities, i.e. causal relations, around industrial agglomeration. Three variables were selected to see causal relations with agglomeration levels based on literatures, and our focus was given to the causality between transport network and agglomeration. Causal relation from transport to agglomeration was found in various industries and this supports the argument that the development of transportation influences industrial agglomeration. At the same time inverse and bi-directional causalities were also revealed implying more complex relationship between these two.