メルコスルにおける自動車産業の立地と分業構造

抄録

Insights of spatial economics tell that the interaction between scale economies and transport cost may generate agglomeration of industries to small number of core locations while leaving the rest as periphery. When this proposition is applied to the case of regional economic integrations such as Mercosur, political factors should be taken more seriously because the marginalized country may break up the integration. Our analysis shows that the automobile industry in Mercosur has sought to maintain production sharing between Argentina and Brazil, even though the market potential of the latter might be bigger. This prevented the Mercosur from potential conflicts. The intra-regional pattern of specialization has evolved showing automakers' high capacity of adaptation to drastically changing macroeconomic environment. We do not support the pessimistic argument for Mercosur based on the declining share of the intra-regional trade, because the rising extra-regional exports of the automobile sector will not dispense the platform of the Mercosur production sharing structure.