Answers:
Alfred Weber, a German economist, attempted to analyse
the factors that influence industrial location. Before Weber, another German
economist Launhardt gave the simple principle of industrial location based on
minimum transport cost. Weber followed Launhardt's principle in his theory and
made it more rigorous and analytical. Ever since then, his theory is being used
in practice.
Weber's main interest was to construct a general
theory of location which could be applied to all industries at all times. He
based his study on general factors of locations relevant to the industries. The
factors considered by him were divided into two groups: those influencing
inter-regional location of industries (i.e. regional factors) and those
influencing intra-regional location (i.e. agglomerating factors). He realised
that raw material, labour, and transportation were the regionally available
factors. Based on the cost of these three factors, he gave the following
assumptions:
- Locations of raw materials including fuel are fixed.
- Situation and size of consuming centres are given.
- Fixed labour supply centres are available from where labours can be
supplied at a fixed wage rate.