• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.67-82
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• 2009

This paper examines the regional economic development policies of the Welsh Development Agency for attracting companies from the perspective of industrial location theory. The Welsh Development Agency has succeeded in attracting domestic or international capital, as a core actor for the regional economic development, and responded to the changing business environment and to the specific and various needs of the investors. The analysis of the Welsh case provides an important theoretical and practical implications. First, the Welsh case shows the importance of the role of the public sectors for the regional economic development. As the behavioral approach and the industrial location theory argue, the attraction of domestic or international capital led to the regional economic development. Second, the effective activities for attracting capital played an important role in the development. The quality and quantity of the information, in the industrial location theory, and the capacity of the business groups, in the behavioral approach, are significant factors of the development. Third, incentives by the Agency are also important. This finding not only supports the classical location model based on the cost and profits, but also the behavioral approach. Finally, the Welsh case could not succeeded in gaining regional economic competitiveness, even though attracting companies, by disregarding the industrial specialization strategy at the local level. This implies that we need to build industrial clusters. In sum, the behavioral approach has significant implications to the understanding of the public policies for attracting companies.