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High technology companies tend to cluster around knowledge-producing institutions. Aerospace follows this pattern, and there are well-known examples of aerospace clusters located around large prime contracting aerospace producers. A recent trend that is taking momentum is the setting up of manufacturing facilities by leading aerospace companies in Mexico. The goals of this thesis are to investigate the type of activities these firms are conducting, as weil as the factors that attracted them to the specifie Mexican cities where they are located, and to examine if national or regional policy measures are framed in a strategy to encourage those firms to carry on knowledge-intensive activities. To understand what types of activities were more likeiy to be transferred to a developing country like Mexico, we use the concept of modularity, the PLC-ILC theory, and the cluster concept, ail of these framed in an evolutionary approach. We expected to find agglomerations of firms carrying out manufacturing activities with little support from public policy.

The main sources of information of this thesis are a survey applied to 30 aerospace firms in Mexico distributed in five Mexican cities, and interviews with four state economic development offices. The results of this thesis show that agglomeration forces in Mexican aerospace clusters are strongly related with cost-reducing manufacturing advantages and policy measures seem insufficient to encourage firms to undertake more complex activities. Mexican authorities should acknowledge that aircraft production presents new challenges due to their particular modular characteristics, and therefore, policy measures …