Industrial clusters and new firm creation in the manufacturing sector of Madrid’s metropolitan region

In Madrid, as in other metropolitan regions, the interest in the agglomeration of economic activities, along with the present perspectives of metropolitan competitiveness and the emerging knowledge-based economy, converge on the field of industrial clusters. In this paper we follow the current recommendations about combining mapping strategies. Firstly with a quantitative identification of industrial complexes in the region, considering as an initial hypothesis the existence of significant input-output relationships among co-located industries. Secondly, the qualitative information from politically selected clusters was used to refine the quantitative cluster identification and to evaluate the creation of new firms within Madrid’s manufacturing clusters