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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Crafts, Nicholas (University of Warwick); Alexander Klein, Alexander (University of Kent) |
| Abstract: | We construct spatially-weighted indices of the geographic concentration of U.S. manufacturing industries during the period 1880 to 1997 using data from the Census of Manufactures. Several important new results emerge from this exercise. First, we find that average spatial concentration was much lower in the late 20th- than in the late 19th-century and that this was the outcome of a continuing reduction over time. Second, the persistent tendency to greater spatial dispersion was characteristic of most manufacturing industries. Third, even so, economically and statistically significant spatial concentration was pervasive throughout this period.Keywords: manufacturing belt; spatial concentration; transport costs. JEL Classification: N62; N92; R12. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:339&r=geo |
| By: | Sebastian Till Braun (School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews); Anica Kramer (RWI); Michael Kvasnicka (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the persistence of a large, unexpected, and regionally very unevenly distributed population shock, the inflow of eight million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II. Using detailed census data from 1939 to 1970, we show that the shock had a persistent effect on the distribution of population within local labor markets, but only a temporary effect on the distribution between labor markets. These results suggest that locational fundamentals determine population patterns across but not within local labor markets, and they can help to explain why previous studies on the persistence of population shocks reached such different conclusions. |
| Keywords: | Population shock, locational fundamentals, agglomeration economies, regional migration, post-war Germany |
| JEL: | J61 R12 R23 N34 |
| Date: | 2017–09–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:san:wpecon:1716&r=geo |
| By: | Fuess, Roland; Lerbs, Oliver |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether and how strongly the share of homeowners in a community affects residential property taxation by local governments. Different from renters, homeowners bear the full property tax burden irrespective of local market conditions, and the tax is more salient to them. \Homeowner communities" may hence oppose high property taxes in order to protect their housing wealth. Using granular spatial data from a complete housing inventory in the 2011 German Census and historical war damages as a source of exogenous variation in local homeownership, we provide empirical evidence that otherwise identical jurisdictions charge significantly lower property taxes when the share of homeowners in their population is higher. This result is invariant to local market conditions, which suggests tax salience as the key mechanism behind this effect. We find positive spatial dependence in tax multipliers, indicative of property tax mimicking by local governments. |
| Keywords: | Homeownership, public financing, residential property tax, spatial tax mimicking, yardstick competition |
| JEL: | D72 H20 H31 H71 R31 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usg:sfwpfi:2017:14&r=geo |
| By: | Rosa Sanchis-Guarner |
| Abstract: | An inflow of immigrants into a region impacts house prices in three ways. For a fixed level of local population, housing demand rises due to the increase in foreign-born population. In addition, immigrants can influence native location decisions and induce additional shifts in demand. Finally, changes in housing supply conditions can in turn affect prices. Existing reduced form estimates of the effect of immigration on house prices capture the sum of all these effects. In this paper, I propose a methodology to identify the different channels driving the total effect. I show that, conditional on supply, total changes in housing demand can be decomposed into the sum of direct immigrant demand and indirect demand changes from relocated population. The size and sign of the indirect demand effect depends on the impact of immigration on native mobility. I use Spanish data during the period 2001-2012 to estimate the different elements of the decomposition, applying an instrumental variables strategy to obtain consistent coefficients. The results show that overlooking the impact of immigration on native location induces a sizeable difference between the total and the immigrant demand effects, affecting the interpretation of the estimates. |
| Keywords: | immigration, housing, Spain, instrumental variables |
| JEL: | J61 R12 R21 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0223&r=geo |
| By: | Monica Plechero (Dept. of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice) |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the mechatronics industrial district of the Veneto region, key for Industry 4.0 and for pursuing development opportunities related to smart specialization strategies. It shows how firms of a local system can gain competitiveness from different modalities of participation to processes of globalization of innovation. Firms' size matters when exploiting own innovation in the international markets, but it is not essential for linking to specific external knowledge sources which can sustain the injection of new knowledge into the system and help firms increase their innovation performances. |
| Keywords: | Industrial district, innovation, internationalization, global innovation network, mechatronics, Veneto region |
| JEL: | R11 F23 |
| Date: | 2017–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vnm:wpdman:144&r=geo |
| By: | Christopher F. Goetz |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces a novel data set combining survey data from the American Community Survey (ACS) with administrative data on employment from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, in order to study geographic labor mobility. With its rich set of information about individuals at the time of the migration decision, large sample size, and near-comprehensive ability to detect labor mobility, the new combined ACS-LEHD data offers several advantages over the existing data sets that are typically used in the study of migration, such as the Decennial Census, Current Population Survey, and Internal Revenue Service data. An overview of how these different data sets can be employed, and examples demonstrating the usefulness of the newly proposed data set, are provided. Aggregate statistics and stylized facts are generated from the ACS-LEHD data which reveal many of the same features as the existing data sets, including the decline of aggregate mobility throughout the past decade, as well as many of the known demographic differences in migration propensity. |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:17-55&r=geo |