Assessment of the Significance of Agglomeration Effects in the South of Siberia

Abstract

Agglomeration effects are an essential element of business decision-making on the location of projects, but in the eastern territories of Russia their significance and influence are questioned. The southern industrial belt of Siberia, including the Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Altai and part of the Krasnoyarsk region, has a combination of development characteristics that can contribute to the manifestation of agglomeration forces. The aim of the study was to obtain quantitative estimates of the impact of the agglomeration effects on the development of the region. The study was based on information about enterprises presented in the SPARK-Interfax database for the period 2019–2020. The analysis methods included maps representing the spatial distribution of the average for the municipalities level of output and profit of the enterprises, as well as an econometric analysis of the influence of the factor of remoteness from the regional capital on the performance of the firm. Regression estimates for individual regions confirmed the importance of agglomeration effects either for revenue or for the profitability of enterprises. Average estimates for enterprises of the entire South Siberian macro-region showed a significant contribution of the agglomeration effects to both output and profit, reducing the distance to the regional center by 2 times increases revenue by 1.6%, and profits by about 5.1%. Confirmation of the significance the of agglomeration forces and their positive impact on the economic and financial characteristics of business in the regions of southern Siberia are the arguments in favor of initiating and implementing public and private infrastructure projects that might improve the transport network and reduce barriers for the interaction of enterprises and population

Keywords

• agglomeration effects
• microeconomic analysis
• enterprises
• output
• profit
• empirical analysis
• south of siberia