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Classification JEL : R11, R12.

This paper proposes a new way for analysing the international trade of intermediaries good. We consider the case of automobile parts with the objective to cross analytic tools from international economics and industrial dynamics. Within the Economy of proximity framework, we propose a method for studying the international fragmentation of global value chain. We construct a typology for auto parts based on the modularity approach and we identify three types of parts: components, meso-components and macro-components. Then we study the evolution of trade for France and Germany for 20 parts during the period 2003/2008. Our main empirical conclusion is to stress that the situation of the German part industry is less favourable that we usually consider and that it is more and more dependant from eastern European countries. We conclude we some suggestions for improving this methodology.

In this paper, we try to understand the new spatial division of labour in the automobile supply industry by considering the localization strategies of French first tier suppliers in European Eastern Countries. The analytical hypothesis is : the development of modular production creates the opportunities to deeply transform the geography of supply chains because modularity creates new opportunities but also new proximity constraints. In a first part, we propose a theoretical typology of locations (with a distinction between production and research units) of first tier suppliers. Then, we deduce which establishments we could find in Eastern Europe Countries. In the second part of the paper, we test our deduction by two ways. First, a statistical analysis of trade exchange of auto parts and components. Second, we make a case study of the French supplier Faurecia. Our results tend to confirm the theoretical analysis. In conclusion, we propose some ways to improve this first work.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new international division of labour in the auto parts industry. Its first section examines the hypothesis that the shift to modular production offers a chance to modify value chain geography inasmuch as modularity causes new opportunities and constraints in geographic proximity terms. An analytical matrix is provided and applied to New Accession Countries, with special consideration being given to French suppliers' circumstances due to the requirement that host country characteristics and company specificities be analysed simultaneously. The second section tests this matrix using statistical data and culminates in a case-study. It will be demonstrated that New Accession Countries are being integrated with the rest of the Continent, due to firms' ongoing search for location-related advantages and because of a tightening/easing interaction that is associated with proximity constraints.

This paper is a survey of the literature about the spatial dynamics of firms. In a first part, we discuss about the traditional theories of location. We review the insights of these theories but also their limits. In particular, we stress the necessity to organize a true dialog between the approaches focusing on firms\' organization, and those who are focusing on the territorial dimension. In other words, we stress that it is a necessity to cross Industrial dynamics and Regional science. In this perspective, the second part of the paper explores the contribution of the Economics of Proximities’ approach. After a presentation of the French school of proximity, we apply this framework to some key current issues

The paper proposes a comparative analysis of the development of the automotive industry in Morocco and Tunisia. In its first part, it analyses the convergence in the forms of international integration, oriented towards a subcontracting towards European Union, which leads to competition and also complementarities between these two countries. The role of multinational firms and governmental policies is discussed. Location of these automotive activities is analyzed in Part 2 to evaluate the agglomeration factors and the limits of spatial concentration.

Depuis 30 ans emergent en peripherie immediate des grands blocs regionaux de nouveaux pays constructeurs d’automobiles : Espagne, Mexique, Republique tcheque, Turquie etc. Les produits assembles dans ces nouveaux espaces sont tres souvent a la pointe de l’innovation et resultent surtout de process pionniers du point de vue organisationnel. L’existence de telles innovations organisationnelles en peripherie cadre mal avec les schemas traditionnels de l’analyse economique de la specialisation internationale. Elle est en revanche plus comprehensible si l’on tient compte des aspects assurantiels des strategies territoriales des constructeurs. Ceux-ci trouvent en peripherie des conditions favorables a la mise en place de changements organisationnels radicaux qui, en attaquant les statuts professionnels et en brouillant le cadre institutionnel du travail du personnel, risqueraient de se heurter a la resistance des salaries des usines centrales.

The paper analyses the evolution of the automotive industry in the Mediterranean area during the last years. First part focuses on the impacts for this region of the geographical changes of the European automotive systems associated to location of multinational automotive firms in CEEC. This leads to difficulties for the automobile countries of the western part of the Mediterranean Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal) on one side, and to a huge growth of the auto industry at the east, in Turkey, on the other. Part 2 studies the changes in North African countries before to discuss the hypothesis of an emerging Mediterranean automotive space.

Since 30 years new automotive countries develop in immediate periphery of the large regional blocks as Spain, Mexico, Czech Republic or Turkey. The products assembled in these new spaces are usually very innovative and originate in pioneering process from the organisational point of view. The existence of such organisational innovations in periphery tallies badly with the traditional theories of the international specialization. It is on the other hand more comprehensible if we take the insurancial aspects of manufacturers’ territorial strategies into consideration. Those find in periphery the favourable terms to the radical organisational changes which, by attacking the professional statutes and by scrambling the institutional reference frame of the employees, would clash with the resistance of central factories workforce.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Fordism experienced a golden age during which it consolidated its domination of the European automobile economy by structuring the region’s producer countries into a mosaic of autonomous units. In the Fordist regime, supply and demand interactions were being played out on a national basis. However, during the final 25 years of the twentieth century, these industrial systems’ national framework faded, to be replaced by a Europe-wide configuration. Nowhere has the regional integration process progressed as far as in Europe. The process of regionalization revolves on an interactive dynamic between the de facto integration process (supply- and demand-related economic factors), and the de juro integration (institutional changes). As such, the regional integration process is governed by the building of institutions, the changes in demand associated with market convergence, and the automobile firms’ strategies for structuring productive spaces.

The purpose of this chapter is to show that the failure of regional integration in the countries of the North of Africa (henceforth called the ‘Maghreb’) does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to the development of a Maghrebi automobile industry with a foothold in the Euro-Mediterranean zone. 1989 saw the creation of the Maghrebi Arab Union (MAU), a grouping of nations whose objective was to establish a free trade zone between Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia. The aim was to create a structure with an outlook similar to an economic and monetary union. At the time of writing this integration process has ground to a halt and its benefits have been severely curtailed. The MAU has not spawned any new opportunities, nor has it made any real contribution to the Maghrebi countries’ industrial development. Although a few bilateral co-operation agreements have constituted tentative initial steps towards a regional division of labour, the absence of an integrated and stimulated institutional framework (and the low level of intra-regional trade) attests to the MAU’s failure.

Since the mid-1980s, the Mexican motor industry has experienced exceptional growth, with annual vehicle output having exceeded the one million mark since 1996 (Table 6.1). This period of expansion, which was sparked off when the big North American companies decided to build a series of assembly facilities in the country, has been sustained by an export boom towards the United States. From an analytical point of view, these events have become a classic example of the Triad having integrated its periphery into its core, and they have come to symbolise a type of industrial development which the present article will from now on refer to as ‘Integrated Peripheral Markets’.1 Mexico is not the only country to have lived through this kind of experience. During the 1970s, the Spanish motor industry also followed a similar trajectory. At the beginning of that decade, Spain had been producing 500000 vehicles annually — but by 1997, this number had soared to 2.5 million (Table 6.2), and the country had caught up with France as Europe’s second largest vehicle producer, far ahead of Italy and the UK. More than 80 per cent of the production of foreign companies in Spain has been exported to the countries in the European heartland.