The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

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The Performance of Seaport Clusters
compared with the nationwide number of firms. About 5.7% of all business establishments in
the US are located in these 17 metropolitan areas. Thus, when for example 11.4% of all
establishments of a certain economic activity are located in the port regions, the localization
quotient is two 61 . The same calculation is made for Rotterdam compared with the national
average 62 .
Table 20 shows the NAICS codes 63 of all economic activities included in the port cluster and
their localization quotient. In some cases, activities are included in the set of port cluster
activities, even though they are not concentrated in port regions. In these cases the
concentration analysis is not precise enough 64 , and there are other arguments for including
these activities in the set of port cluster activities. These arguments are given at the bottom
of the table.
largest US metro areas (such as New York, LA, and Chicago) because even though these cities
have ports, they are by no means port cities. The remaining port regions are Baton Rouge,
Beaumont, Charleston, Corpus Christi, Duluth Superior, Galveston, Houston, Huntington, Lake
Charles, Mobile, Naples, New Jersey City, New Orleans, Norfolk Harbor, Pittsburg, St Louis and
Tacoma.
61 In formula form, this can be expressed as LCi = 17.5* Fiport regions /FiUSA, where LCi is the
localization quotient of industry i and Fi is the number of firms in that industry, in the 17 port
regions respectively in the entire USA. The constant of 17.5 is explained because the overall
number of firms in the USA is 17.5 times higher than the overall number of firms in the 17 port
regions).
62 The specialization quotient is based on a comparison of the Rotterdam port region with the
national average. Since the Netherlands as a whole is specialized in ports, maritime activities
and logistics (Policy Research Corporation, 2001) comparing Rotterdam to the European
average would have been better, but data on a European level are lacking.
63 The corresponding BIK code, a Dutch classification system, is given in appendix 3.
64 For instance because the activities are related to commodities that are handled only in a
number of the 17 ports, or when only a part of the firms in the industry a port related. In both
cases the concentration analysis does not show economic relations.