Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
production process, then the location will tend towards the market point.
Examples here would be the case of microprocessors, whose density tends
to increase significantly during the production process and also that of
furniture, whose density tends to fall significantly during the production
process. These would suggest that within the simple Weber model frame-
work at least, microprocessors will be produced by firms located close to
the input sources, whereas furniture will be produced by firms located
close to the market.
Such varying locational outcomes can also be generated within the
simple Weber framework in situations where firms differ in terms of their
technical efficiency. If firm
A
discards 50 per cent of the inputs during
the production process, whereas firm
B
discards only 25 per cent of the
inputs during the production process, for the same total weight of inputs
consumed by each firm, the total output weight
m
3
produced by firm
B
is twice as great as that of firm
A
. Following the logic of the model, the
greater weight of outputs
m
3
produced by firm
B
will also encourage it to
move closer towards the market point and further away from the inputs
points than firm
A
.
Although our analysis here has so far been developed within just the
triangular case of only two input source locations and one output market
location, the Weber location-production types of arguments are perfectly
applicable to the case of firms with multiple input and output locations
(Eswaran et al. 1981; Revelle 1986), as is typical of MPDEs and MNEs.
Figure 3.5 depicts the case of a single establishment firm which has mul-
tiple input source locations
S
1
,
S
2
,
S
3
,
S
4
, and
S
5
, and also multiple output
market locations,
M
3
,
M
4
,
M
5
and
M
6
. In fact, this type of complex supply
chain system involving multiple input-output arrangements and which
produces a polygonal form of location-production system, is the normal
observed case, and is almost always the case for MNEs. In contrast, while
the triangular type of system depicted in Figures 3.2‒3.4 is observationally
an unusual case, it is not analytically a special case, in that all the optimum
location results generated by the triangular case are also applicable to
all polygonal cases. Therefore, the reason for employing the triangular
case of the two input locations and one output market location is simply
pedagogical, in that this particular spatial structure is the easiest two-
dimensional model to explain.
The importance of the simple Weber model is that it helps us to under-
stand the advantages which geography confers on particular locations
as sites for mobile firm investment. However, the Weber analysis so far
has been based on the assumption that the firms have a fixed coefficients
production function. More complex models based on the seminal paper of
Moses (1958) demonstrate that the basic Weber insights can also be shown
