The paper aims to explore how factors of regional competitiveness are associated with the location of car manufacturing companies in the EU. Although the European automotive market can be characterized by an intense dynamics in terms of location choices, literature offers little empirical guidance on how regional factors influence the location of car manufacturers in the EU. This paper aims to fill this gap by combining regional competitiveness data on 276 EU regions with the actual location of all 269 production units of car manufacturing companies currently present in the EU. Logistic regression is used to discover significant relationships, while the comparative analysis of clusters of regions is meant to offer a more detailed understanding of the role of different location factors. Results of the analysis show that the most influential location factor is related to infrastructural development, but other competitiveness factors, such as regional innovation capabilities or labour market efficiency, might also play an important role.

中文翻译：

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欧盟汽车制造公司的区域级区位因素研究

本文旨在探讨区域竞争力因素如何与欧盟汽车制造公司的地理位置相关联。尽管欧洲汽车市场的特点可能是地区选择方面的激烈变化，但文献对区域性因素如何影响欧盟汽车制造商的地区提供了很少的经验指导。本文旨在通过将276个欧盟地区的地区竞争力数据与当前在欧盟存在的所有269家汽车制造公司的生产单位的实际位置相结合来填补这一空白。Logistic回归用于发现重要的关系，而对区域集群的比较分析旨在提供对不同位置因素作用的更详细的了解。