This paper is concerned with the movement of manufacturing industry between GB counties during the period 1972-81. After discussing the nature of movement data, the inter-regional and inter-county movement of manufacturing establishments is examined for the period 1972-81. The main focus of the paper, however, lies in the development of a model of industrial movement based upon a stock-adjustment approach distinguishing between actual and optimal moves and leading to an empirical test of various explanations of industrial movement via a binomial probability model. The main findings are that inter-county differences in industrial rates and in the cost of premises had a significant effect on movement during the period 1972-81. Distance, as expected, also played a critical role in explaining the geographical pattern of movement though labour availability and labour costs were found to be unrelated to this pattern. Finally, the impact of regional financial incentives is found to be negligible but this result may be due to the spatially restricted nature of certain data items which limit the subsequent application of the model.
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