Regional Productivity Dynamics of Manufacturing in Greece

Abstract

Although employment change captures only one dimension of spatially uneven industrial growth, geographers have often tended to treat it as almost the exclusive indicator of regional performance. As a result, it is not infrequently the case that this more or less sole focus on employment, although valuable in itself, produces an incomplete and sometimes some what distorted view of spatial economic change. The case of regional manufacturing restructuring in Greece during the 1970s and 1980s provides an example of the problems that over-concentration on employment can involve. By jointly examining the evolution of employment together with output, and the consequent labour productivity in the regions of Greece, the existence of two distinct geographies of uneven industrial expansion becomes apparent. The prefectures gaining most in terms of employment are not necessarily those gaining most in output. Although locally focused case-studies are probably what is required for a full understanding of the different facets of regional accumulation processes, the parallel examination of these three parameters provides a general idea of the possible different spatial outcomes of manufacturing expansion. It is this latter focus that is the purpose of this article.