Anne MARGARIAN
Thünen-Institute of Rural Studies, Bundesallee 50. 38116 Braunschweig, Germany
anne.margarian@ti.bund.de
Abstract
For the impartial observer of German regions, differences in regional industry structures and prosperity are quite obvious. On the one side, there are regions characterised by different industries, firm structures and labour qualification profiles. On the other side, some of these regions are prosperous, dynamic and growing in terms of inhabitants, labor force and income while others obviously suffer from high unemployment, low tax base and an unsatisfactory income situation. The analysis presented in this paper relates the regional industry structure to the socio-economic fundamentals that describe the regions’ productivity, its income distribution and its population dynamics. The statistical model is based on the approach of moderated mediation. It is thereby able to show that the estimated relations are conditional on the degree of regions’ centrality respectively remoteness. Moreover, the analysis distinguishes direct and indirect relations and therefore allows for an identification of the multiple dimensions of the potential effects of local industry structures in cultural, productivity and distributive terms.