ABSTRACT
The aim of this work is to take a closer look at the industrial structure of the Austrian economy with a special focus on regional and industrial structural change. Since Austria joined the European Union in the mid 1990s, one might have expected a certain tendency towards increasing specialisation of regions and concentration of industries due to increased competition in the larger European market. Any such Austrian experience with integration would be of special interest to the new accession countries, as Austria’s accession to the European Union is still fairly recent and most of the new entrants are of similar size. Moreover, Austria is a close neighbour to several of the new entrants, and it shares a common history with them that may also affect economic structures, trade relations and general attitudes to a certain degree up to today. Accordingly, a vast literature has already analysed integration-induced changes in the Austrian industrial structure. In supplementing this literature, this work analyses the industrial structure and the shifts within it not only in a sectoral but as well in a regional breakdown. To this behalf, quantitative measures on a regional basis will be applied.
