HOW IMPORTANT ARE AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES: A CASE STUDY OF ROMANIAN INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERS

The present research aims to contribute to the discussion on the importance of agglomeration economies through a case study on Romanian industrial concentrations. The material presents the results of the analysis of industrial geographic groups. Based on the methodology recommended by the EU good practices, we have identified and classified, according to their importance, industrial agglomerations at national scale, by county administrative unit (NUTS 3) and by industrial sectors in 4 digit NACE classification. The analysis leads to a mapping of agglomerations by their geographical position, as well as to a hierarchy of agglomerations according to an evaluation scale with values between 0 (minimum) and 3 (maximum) stars, by indicators of size, specialization and concentration. The analysis of a performance indicator on export is also added to the discussion regarding the sectors’ capacity of competitive performance.