Geographical Forced Agglomeration: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Marine Industrial Clustering

Abstract

This paper advances the concept of "geographical forced agglomeration" (GFA) as a distinctive theoretical contribution to understanding marine industrial clustering. Unlike terrestrial industrial agglomeration, which is predominantly driven by voluntary firm choices rooted in labor pooling, shared intermediate inputs, and knowledge spillovers (Marshall, 1890; Krugman, 1991), marine industrial agglomeration exhibits a fundamentally different mechanism: it is primarily constrained and determined by the geographical distribution of marine resources. This distinction maps directly onto Krugman's (1993) first-nature versus second-nature geography framework, with GFA representing the dominance of first-nature forces, natural endowments, over second-nature forces, market-access externalities. The paper argues that the failure to recognize this distinction has generated systematic misapplication of terrestrial agglomeration indices to marine contexts, leading to theoretical confusion and misleading policy prescriptions. By developing the GFA concept, examining its manifestation across marine sectors, and tracing its implications for measurement and policy, this paper provides a critical lens for reexamining existing marine economic research and offers a concrete pathway for theoretical advancement in the field.