The Location of High-technology Manufacturing in Great Britain: Changes in the Late 1980s

Positive feedback processes, set in the context of all-industry location factors, provide the theoretical background to the statistical analysis of the shift-share residual component which is used to identify the localisation and delocalisation by county of high-technology manufacturing in Great Britain. Delocalisation from London appears to be well established, but apart from the Welsh countries, where the stimulus seems to be largely policy effects, none of the other shift-share residuals are significant enough to be distinguishable from random variation. However, this is after the elimination of an 'aerospace effect' which significantly disturbs the otherwise random spatial variation. The techniques used in the paper separate signal from noise in the residual component of the shift-share method, which by itself offers no 'explanation' of the residual.

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