Are Clusters More Resilient in Crises? Evidence from French Exporters in 2008-2009

23 Pages Posted: 30 Sep 2013

See all articles by Phillipe Martin

Phillipe Martin

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)

Thierry Mayer

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)

Florian Mayneris

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Date Written: September 2013

Abstract

Clusters have already been extensively shown to favor firm-level economic performance (productivity, exports, innovation etc.). However, little is known about the capacity of firms in clusters to resist economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze whether firms that agglomerate in clusters and firms that have been selected to benefit from the "competitiveness cluster'' industrial policy, implemented in France in 2005, have performed better on export markets during the recent economic turmoil. We show that, on average, both agglomeration and the cluster policy are associated with a higher survival probability of firms on export markets, and conditioning on survival, a higher growth rate of their exports. However, these effects are not stronger during the 2008-2009 crisis; if anything, the opposite is true. We then show that this weaker resilience of competitiveness cluster firms is probably due to the fact that firms in clusters are more dependent on the fate of the "leader'', i.e. the largest exporter in the cluster.

Keywords: clusters, competitiveness clusters, crisis, exports, resilience

JEL Classification: F1, R10, R11, R12, R15

Suggested Citation

Martin, Phillipe and Mayer, Thierry and Mayneris, Florian, Are Clusters More Resilient in Crises? Evidence from French Exporters in 2008-2009 (September 2013). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP9667, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2333585

Phillipe Martin (Contact Author)

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) ( email )

27, rue Saint-Guillaume
Paris, 75007
France

Thierry Mayer

Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) ( email )

Florian Mayneris

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) - Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) ( email )

34 Voie du Roman Pays
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, b-1348
Belgium

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
0
Abstract Views
968
PlumX Metrics