Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Pablo Alonso Villa
Author-Name: Juan José Juste Carrión
Title:  El sector de la automoción en Castilla y León. 50 años de crecimiento económico y productividad: 1961-2011.
Abstract: Resumen:El presente trabajo se centra en el estudio de la evolución experimentada por el sector del automóvil en Castilla y León a lo largo de las cinco últimas décadas y su importancia relativa dentro de la economía de la región. Se examina el comportamiento de los principales agregados del sector y sus elementos determinantes. Las estimaciones que se han realizado de los servicios del factor capital, a partir de los datos sobre stock de capital ofrecidos por la Fundación BBVA (FBBVA), y siguiendo las recomendaciones de la OCDE, suponen un aspecto novedoso en los estudios sobre el sector del automóvil.Abstract:
The automobile industry is one of
the manufacturing branches with a greater presence on a global scale and,
therefore, one of the activities that has most intensely suffered from the
international crisis in Spain.
Despite this fact, the great dynamism of the sector has made possible its rapid
recovery.
Within the specialized bibliography,
several authors highlight the considerable backwardness of Spain in the
take-off and consolidation of this industry. However, over time, the country
has been gaining positions until becoming, at present, the ninth producer of
vehicles on a global scale and the second at European level, according to the
data of the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA).
At the regional level, the development of this industry has been uneven, given
that the car and components manufacturers didn’t establish themselves in the
national territory at the same time, resulting in a geographical distribution
and a spatial influence quite heterogeneous.
With respect to the regional
context, Castile and Leon has been
characterized, during a considerable part of the contemporary period, as an
eminently agricultural region. However, during the first half of the 20th
century, as in Spain,
there was a process of strong tertiarization of the region's economy, with the
services sector reaching 60% of the Gross Value Added (GVA) at the beginning of
the 1960s. 
Regarding the industrial sector in
the region, its weight on the total regional GVA was, in 1961, 15%. Since that
decade, manufacturing activities were gaining importance within the economic
structure of Castile and Leon, until
exceeding, in 2011, 21% of regional GVA. One of the fundamental features of
this industrial fabric has been, and continues to be, its strong sectoral
polarization. A small number of subsectors currently concentrate the bulk of
the main economic variables: added value, employment, sales, investments, etc.
Among them, two clearly stand out: the agri-food industry (AFI) and the
transport material branch, in which the automotive industry is integrated. 
Historically, the manufacturing
tradition of Castile and Leon goes back
in large part to the first third of the 20th century. Although the beginning of
the automobile industry in the region dates back to this period, it took
several decades to set up an industry of some importance in the region. Before
the start of the 50s, small family firms were created, dedicated, among other
things, to manufacture parts and components for motor vehicles, which adjusted
the volume of production, as well as the range of products, to the demand
fluctuations. 
After the creation of FASA (December
1951), FADISA (1956) and SAVA (1957), an
incipient automotive business fabric began slowly to be developed in the
region, along with an increasingly relevant auxiliary industry. As happened at
the national level, the automotive branch was gaining significance within the
regional industry, until being among the productive activities with the
greatest capacity to generate added value and employment. In this sense,
despite representing only 1.2% of the total number of industrial companies
existing in the region, the branch Transport
Material concentrated, in 2014, 11.9% of regional industrial employment -
which reflects the high average size of productive establishments (98.4 jobs
per company, compared to a regional industrial average of 10.1) - and 20.1% of
the turnover (placing itself in second position, after the AFI). This activity
generates a high volume of direct employment, although unequally distributed
across the regional territory, given that most of the productive centers are
located in only two provinces: Valladolid and Burgos.
<pre>In any case, despite its slow initial development the Castile and Leon’s automobile production was acquiring more and more prominence within the homonymous national sector; in fact, the region currently ranks first in terms of the number of vehicles manufactured, surpassing Catalonia. Moreover, the successful business experience of FASA-Renault, Iveco and other large auto parts companies, among which the native Antolin Group stands out, has placed them among the world’s most important production centers in their respective segments. In this performance, as it will be shown, in addition to low wages, labor productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) have been key elements, with a significant impact on the competitiveness of the regional automobile sector as a whole.</pre>
Taking into account the precedent
considerations, this paper focuses on the study of the evolution of this sector
in Castile and Leon over the
last five decades and its relative importance within the economy of the region.
In this sense, the performance of the main macroeconomic indicators of the
automotive industry and its determinants are examined. Thus, on the one hand,
the growth experienced by the GVA is measured, as well as the contribution of
the different productive factors. On the other hand, the increase of average
labor productivity and the impact of the different factors affecting its
performance are analyzed. The capital factor estimates contained in this
document, based on data provided by the BBVA Foundation, in accordance with the
recommendations of the OECD and the EU KLEMS project -which allow the
calculation of the services provided to the productive process by the capital
stock– constitutes really a novel aspect, within the field of productivity
studies applied to the automotive sector. For the rest of the variables, the BD
MORES database was used, the most extensive for regional data by branch of
activity in Spain.
<pre>The expansion of GVA has been very important, and this growth is mainly explained by the services of non-ICT capital -thanks to important investments for the mechanization and modernization of assembly lines and productive facilities of companies-,as well as technical progress and improvements in productive efficiency.</pre>With regard to
productivity, a similar performance is noted. In this sense, the automotive
sector achieves higher levels of productivity than the rest of productive
branches of the regional industry, except Chemical
and Pharmaceutical Industry. These productivity gains were a result, as in
the case of GVA, of increases in capital services per worker, especially
non-ICT capital, and notable improvements in TFP experienced since the 1990s.
Classification-JEL: R1
Keywords: Sector Del Automóvil, Índice de Productividad de Malmquist., Fuentes Del Crecimiento, Castilla y León., Automotive Sector, Apparent Productivity of Employment, Sources of Growth
Pages: 101-136
Volume: 3
Year: 2018
File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2554.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:3:y:2018:p:101-136