nep-geo New Economics Papers
on Economic Geography
Issue of 2007‒12‒01
fifteen papers chosen by
Vassilis Monastiriotis
London School of Economics

  1. Banning the Bahn: Transport Infrastructure Effects on Austrian Cluster Firms By Edward M. Bergman; Gunther Maier; Patrick Lehner
  2. Regional Dispersion of Economic Activities And Models of Capitalism in Europe By Francesca Gambarotto; Stefano Solari
  3. Household Spending Patterns: A Comparison of Four Census Regions By Cassandra Yocum
  4. Regionalprofil der Region "Wien - Bratislava" By Ronald Kauper; René Steinbauer
  5. Cluster Life-Cycles: An Emerging Synthesis By Edward M. Bergman
  6. Breaking the vicious cycle in peripheral rural regions: the case of "Waldviertler Wohlviertel" in Austria By Bernhard Kurka; Gunther Maier; Sabine Sedlacek
  7. Indonesia’s Changing Economic Geography By Hal Hill; Budy Resosudarmo; Yogi Vidyattama
  8. The Vienna software cluster: Local buzz without global pipelines? By Michaela Trippl; Franz Tödtling; Lukas Lengauer
  9. Local Credit and Territorial Development: General Aspects and the Italian Experience By Silvio Goglio
  10. Property Tax in Urban China By Dan Li; Shunfeng Song
  11. How are Wages set in Beijing? By Jose De Sousa; Sandra Poncet
  12. Further Analysis of the Zipf's Law: Does the Rank-Size Rule Really Exist? By Fungisai Nota; Shunfeng Song
  13. Geography vs. Institutions at the Village Level By Grimm, Michael; Klasen, Stephan
  14. US FDI flows to ASEAN-5: Do Geographic Neighbors Matter? By Kemegue, Francis; Mohan, Ramesh
  15. La territorialisation d'un processus d'industrialisation : des "tradi-clusters" aux "néo-clusters", premiers jalons pour une typologie des agglomérations d'entreprises en Thaïlande By Audrey Baron Gutty; Catherine Figuière; Jean-Christophe Simon

  1. By: Edward M. Bergman; Gunther Maier; Patrick Lehner
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2007_05&r=geo
  2. By: Francesca Gambarotto (University of Padua); Stefano Solari
    Abstract: This study hypothesises that the EU15 contains at least four models of capitalism which rely on some different institutional arrangements. Our aim is to show that some relationship exists between the different institutional settings and the different geographical patterns of development at regional level. After testing the statistical relevance of our territorial areas, we have calculated several concentration and dispersion indexes to the available regional economic data. We conclude that in Europe different institutional macro-configurations do display dissimilar growth models based on rather diverse core-periphery models.
    Keywords: models of capitalism, dispersion of economic activity, core-periphery
    JEL: O11 P25 R12 R58
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0061&r=geo
  3. By: Cassandra Yocum (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
    Abstract: This paper reviews the expenditures made by households in selected areas of the United States as defined by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and classified into four regional areas. Following a model previously devised and published in the Monthly Labor Review, it then attempts to break down these aggregate expenditures into five categories of change which can impact total expenditures. These categories, or components of change in total expenditures, are population growth within a geographic region, the effects of changes in population concentrations between local areas within a geographic region, allowances for any changes in the definitions of goods and services as collected and priced by the CPI, price changes, and quantity changes. Some of the largest impacts in each region for each component are discussed. Comparisons of results are made between regions for selected goods and services in each of the eight major groups of commodities and services used by the CPI.
    Keywords: Relative Importance, CPI, Expenditures, Regional Comparisons
    JEL: D12 J11 R11
    Date: 2007–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bls:wpaper:ec070110&r=geo
  4. By: Ronald Kauper; René Steinbauer
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2007_06&r=geo
  5. By: Edward M. Bergman
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2007_04&r=geo
  6. By: Bernhard Kurka; Gunther Maier; Sabine Sedlacek
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2007_03&r=geo
  7. By: Hal Hill (Division of Economics, RSPAS, The AUstralian National University); Budy Resosudarmo (Division of Economics, RSPAS, The AUstralian National University); Yogi Vidyattama (Division of Economics, RSPAS, The AUstralian National University)
    Abstract: Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state, and one of the most spatially diverse nations on earth in its resource endowments, population settlements, location of economic activity, ecology and ethnicity. The regional socio-economic data base now extends over 30 years, and so it is possible to draw conclusions about the country’s regional development dynamics since the 1970s. In this paper, we examine economic growth, inequality, convergence, structural change and social indicators for a consolidated group of 26 provinces, ie, the 27 of the late Soeharto period excluding East Timor. Our major conclusions include the following: (a) There continues to be great diversity in economic and social outcomes, but growth and social progress have been remarkably even. The poorest regions, mainly located in Eastern Indonesia, have generally performed about as well as the national average. (b) The better performing regions are typically those that are the most ‘connected’ to the global economy. In this respect, Jakarta stands out as a special case, growing richer than the rest of the country over time. (c) As expected, conflict is particularly harmful to economic development, as illustrated in the case of Maluku and to a lesser extent Aceh. (d) There is no clear natural resource story, in that the performance of the resource-rich provinces has varied considerably.
    Keywords: Economic Geography, economic growth, convergence, Indonesia
    JEL: R0 R1
    Date: 2007–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unp:wpaper:200713&r=geo
  8. By: Michaela Trippl; Franz Tödtling; Lukas Lengauer
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2007_07&r=geo
  9. By: Silvio Goglio
    Abstract: The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship that arose in Italy between local financial systems and local production systems in the period of the country’s post-war reconstruction, when it rejoined the trajectories of modern economic development. This will be done by verifying two hypotheses. The first is of a more general nature. It states that, in a given territory, the supply of credit, and the financial system supporting it, constitute only one local factor in development. They combine with numerous other factors, even ones uncorrelated with them, which may be present in varying proportions according to the coordinates of time and place, and which give rise to the set of opportunities for investment. The second hypothesis tested concerns Italy in particular. It states that certain public choices of the post-war period, functional to specific political strategies and to more generic strategies of medium-period growth, proved unable in the long period to sustain a modern equilibrium among factor endowments, socio-cultural components, and the political-administrative apparatus. The hypotheses will be verified by considering the main findings in the theoretical and empirical literature on the general aspects of the relationship between financial systems and territorial development, and by examining the odd relationship between credit and local firms in Italy.
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpde:0727&r=geo
  10. By: Dan Li (First Independent Bank of Nevada, Reno, NV); Shunfeng Song (Department of Economics, University of Nevada, Reno)
    Abstract: This paper examines the urban housing sector of China and proposes a property tax reform. Over the past decade, housing price in urban China has been increasing dramatically because of strong demand for self-use, investment and speculation. The booming housing market, however, has brought several challenges for further development, such as housing affordability, inequality, and possible housing bubble. One strategy is to reform the current property tax system. Specifically, this paper proposes that China significantly reduces taxes in circulation but levies property tax during possession. Doing so will increase housing affordability because of lower transaction costs, reduce speculation because of higher cost of holding, stabilize fiscal system because of more sustainable tax revenues, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the property tax system because of the implementation of “ability-to-pay” and “who use who pay” principles.
    Keywords: Property tax; China
    JEL: R23 R21 H20
    Date: 2007–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unr:wpaper:07-008&r=geo
  11. By: Jose De Sousa; Sandra Poncet
    Abstract: Over the last fifteen years, China’s export performance has been phenomenal but some observers assert that this situation is temporary due to rising labor costs. However, large migration across provinces may increase competition on the labor market of export-intensive provinces and allow firms to keep low wages for many years. This paper attempts to shed some light on this debate over wage dynamics in China. We investigate the respective importance of the upward push of world demand and the downward pressure of migration. This investigation is conducted on a sample of 29 Chinese provinces between 1997 and 2004. We find, holding other factors fixed, that provincial wages increase by about 17 percent per year, due to common trends possibly like total factor productivity growth and national increase in prices. Our results show that besides this general trend, market access and internal migration have statistically and economically significant effects on the provincial wage level but of much less importance. We estimate that on average over the 7 year period of our sample, more intense internal migration has slowed down wage growth by 2 percent per year. The wage increasing impact of market access is three times smaller in magnitude.
    Keywords: Wage; China; immigration; economic geography
    JEL: F12 F15 R11 R12
    Date: 2007–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepidt:2007-13&r=geo
  12. By: Fungisai Nota (Department of Resource Economics, University of Nevada, Reno); Shunfeng Song (Department of Economics, University of Nevada, Reno)
    Abstract: The widely-used Zipf’s law has two striking regularities. One is its excellent fit; the other is its close-to-one exponent. When the exponent equals to one, the Zipf’s law collapses into the rank-size rule. This paper further analyzes the Zipf exponent. By changing the sample size, the truncation point, and the mix of cities in the sample, we found that the exponent is close to one only for some selected sub-samples. Small samples of large cities alone provide higher value of the exponent whereas small cities introduce high variance and lower the value of the exponent. Using the values of estimated exponent from the rolling sample method, we obtained an elasticity of the exponent with respect to sample size. We concluded that the rank-size rule is not an economic regularity but a statistical phenomenon.
    Keywords: Zipf's law; Rank-size rule; Rolling sample method
    JEL: C1 R11 R12
    Date: 2007–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unr:wpaper:07-006&r=geo
  13. By: Grimm, Michael; Klasen, Stephan
    Abstract: - There is well-known debate about the respective role of geography versus institutions in explaining the long term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this last point by using settler morality as an instrument for endegenous institutions and found that this supported their line of reasoning. We believe there is value-added to consider this debate at the micro level within a country as particularly questions of parameter heterogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are likely to be smaller than between countries. Hence, we examine the determinants of agricultural growth across villages on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi and find technology adoption to play a crucial role. We show that geography through its effects on migration and institutions is a valid instrument to establish the causal links between institutions and technology adoption as well as technology and agricultural growth.
    Keywords: Geography, land rights, migration, technology adoption, agricultural developement, Indonesia
    JEL: K11 O12 Q12
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:gdec07:6532&r=geo
  14. By: Kemegue, Francis; Mohan, Ramesh
    Abstract: This paper investigates the possibility of interdependence between flows of US FDI to the ASEAN region. The study incorporates information asymmetry into an FDI model to examine the influence of geographic neighbors on new flows of FDI from the United States. Spillovers are modeled using the cost structure of a multinational investing in a region where US firms are already present. The results show that there are negative spillovers of US FDI in the ASEAN region affecting mostly the non-manufacturing sector.
    Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment; Spillovers; ASEAN
    JEL: O5 F23 F21
    Date: 2007–11–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:5988&r=geo
  15. By: Audrey Baron Gutty (IAO - Institut d'Asie Orientale - CNRS : UMR5062 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines); Catherine Figuière (LEPII - Laboratoire d'Économie de la Production et de l'Intégration Internationale - CNRS : UMR5252 - Université Pierre Mendès-France - Grenoble II); Jean-Christophe Simon (LEPII - Laboratoire d'Économie de la Production et de l'Intégration Internationale - CNRS : UMR5252 - Université Pierre Mendès-France - Grenoble II)
    Abstract: Cette contribution traite des enjeux de la dynamique des clusters industriels dans une économie émergente, la Thaïlande. La démarche se base sur une confrontation entre des résultats obtenus sur le terrain et les travaux antérieurs fondés sur les économies développées. La transposition de la réflexion permet de proposer trois catégories de clusters : "tradi-clusters", "néo-clusters" et "plani-clusters". Ces catégories diffèrent par leurs origines, leurs dynamiques sectorielles ou encore les effets d'entraînement sur leur environnement économique et social.
    Keywords: territoire ; développement industriel ; pays émergent ; cluster ; entreprise ; industrie textile ; industrialisation ; cluster ; Thaïlande
    Date: 2007–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:papers:halshs-00186735_v1&r=geo

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