The Geography of British Exports

Abstract

The geographical study of the origins of foreign exports within an exporting country has received no serious attention to date, despite its undoubted practical importance. Data relating to the origins of British exports in 1964 enable this pattern to be described and analysed with respect to a series of possible ‘causal’ factors. These themselves represent a range of spatial, structural, and dynamic economic characteristics of areas for which the data are recorded. Although subsequent analysis is qualified by possible data deficiencies, the general result is that such characteristics are capable of ‘explaining’ under half of the overall spatial variation in export generation, suggesting that more attention should be given to other, essentially nongeographical variables, with consequent significant implications for industrial and regional policy.