SPATIAL INTERLINKAGES BASED ON A NETWORK ANALYSIS. A STUDY CASE : CHINA

The objective of our article is to present an original spatial methodology based on the network analysis approach in order to identify and to track spatial linkages among economic activites. By comparing patterns of local employment, this methodology shows interlinkages among activities. Important for understanding potential interrelated phenomena especially in the case of an exogenous choc. The case study for our research is economuc activities in China whose interlinkages has usually been examined by using an input-output matrix (IOM). Indeed, IOM allows to depict and analyze the dependence of one industry or sector on another very useful for estimating the impact of eventual shocks and analyzing the ripple effects throughout and economy but is inadaptable for a spatial dependency relations analysis. Using the local employment of 287 municipalities across 14 economic activities, the approach proposed identifies spatial interlinkages among them in terms of employment patterns. What spatial interlinkages tell us regarding a Chinese economic structure?