Vol. 6 Num. 1 - GCG: Revista de Globalización, Competitividad y ...

Clemente Hernández-Rodríguez & Raúl Francisco Montalvo-CorzoTable 2 is related to the environment created in a market economy in the business, economic,and social areas. To measure the impact of the clusters, seven dimensions are considered.The first dimension involves the agglomeration economies measured by seven variables plusthe level of entrepreneurship. The second relates to knowledge spillovers and is measuredby two variables related to knowledge and two related to innovation. The third factor concernsincreases in productivity and efficiency, measured by the index of productivity levels ofthe International Labor Organization. The fourth factor relates to positive impact in the operationand is measured by three variables of the business environment. The fifth factor involveseconomic impact, and includes the variables of investment attraction, solid macroeconomy,and exports. The sixth factor involves the sociopolitical Impact, measured by four variablesof social and political factors. The seventh and final factor concerns competitiveness, and ismeasured by the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum.754.2. Measurement of the Dimensions of the Impacts of ClustersTable 2 shows the variables used (and their sources) in the construction of the indexes thatrepresents the eight dimensions of the beneficial impacts of clusters. Table 2 lists each of theseven dimensions studied with its respective variables.The sample included 25 selected countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,Chile, China, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, theNetherlands, Norway, Peru, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA).Next we compile the information into a database. In some cases we found more than oneindex or ranking to describe each dimension of the clusters’ impact, so we decided to createa composed index for each of the parameters corresponding to the seven dimensions.Then we normalize the data with 100 as maximum, in order to create averages for eachcategory or dimension. Given that some databases excluded some countries we have chosen,one of the challenges we faced was to find databases with information for each of thecountries in our sample. Annex 2 shows the created standardized values (base 100) for thedimensions defined in Table 1. It also shows the original sources.As soon as all the Indexes were normalized to a 100 base, we did simple averages of the variablesincluded in each analyzed dimension. Annex 3 shows the parameters for the samplecountries for each one of the seven dimensions of the cluster impacts.The next step was to construct radars using the information for each one of the seven defineddimensions. We also included the maximum possible attainable value for each dimension.GCG GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY - UNIVERSIA ENERO-ABRIL 2012 VOL. 6 NUM. 1 ISSN: 1988-7116pp: 55-90