Empirical Research: The Scottish Electronics Industry

The purpose of this chapter is to fit a statistical model to a particular regional industrial example, in order to test the theoretical predictions of Chapter Four. Chapter Five indicated the necessary macro-and micro-economic data required to identify logistics-cost predictions of localisation economy impacts of the adoption of a JIT purchasing policy, and the industrial case study chosen for analysis here is the Scottish Electronics Industry during the latter years of the 1980s. For our purposes Scotland as a whole is treated as a U.K. region. This definition is straightforward as the geographical boundaries of Scotland are clearly defined. Moreover, this is the approach adopted by the Central Statistical Office and allows data published for Scotland as a nation to be treated as regional economic data for our purposes. This secondary published data will provide not only the background against which primary data will be collected, but will also largely determine what kind of primary data needs to be acquired in order to fulfil the requirements of Chapter Five. Consequently, before we discuss the particular statistical model employed, it is first necessary to discuss the secondary data available, and in order make sense of this data, we will begin with a brief background to the case study in question.