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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Richard Baldwin; Toshihiro Okubo |
| Abstract: | A Melitz-style model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms is integrated into a simple New Economic Geography model to show that the standard assumption of identical firms is neither necessary nor innocuous. We show that re-locating to the big region is most attractive for the most productive firms; this implies interesting results for empirical work and policy analysis. A 'selection effect' means standard empirical measures overestimate agglomeration economies. A 'sorting effect' means that a regional policy induces the highest productivity firms to move to the core while the lowest productivity firms to move to the periphery. We also show that heterogeneity dampens the home market effect. |
| JEL: | H32 P16 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11650&r=geo |
| By: | Richard Arnott (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | This paper looks at parking policy in dense urban districts ("downtown"), where spatial competition between parking garages is a key feature. The paper has four parts. The first looks at the "parking garage operator's problem". The second derives the equilibrium in the parking garage market when there is no on-street parking, compares the equilibrium to the social optimum, and examines parking policy in this context. The third considers how the presence of on-street parking alters the analysis, and the fourth extends the analysis to include mass transit. |
| Keywords: | parking, off-street parking, on-street parking, parking garages, mass transit, parking policy, second best, spatial competition |
| JEL: | R40 L91 |
| Date: | 2005–09–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:627&r=geo |
| By: | E. Anthon Eff |
| Abstract: | Inter-county flows of commuters have long been used by the Bureau of the Census to identify MSAs and by the BEA to identify its Economic Areas. This paper looks at U.S. interregional flows of commuters, population, and goods in an effort to identify broader patterns of relationships among U.S. regions. A region’s primary flow up the central place hierarchy is found using tools commonly employed in Social Network Analysis. The results allow classification of regions in two ways: 1) as levels in a hierarchy; or 2) as a member of a group of regions all tied to the same member of the next-highest level of the hierarchy. |
| Keywords: | Central Place Theory, Network Analysis, Migration, Trade |
| JEL: | R1 R12 |
| Date: | 2005–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mts:wpaper:200508&r=geo |
| By: | Zeljko Bogetic (The World Bank); Issa Sanogo (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Recent contributions in economic geography reflect renewed interest in issues of location and spatial concentration of economic activities, yet there are still few empirical studies of developing countries, particularly in Africa. This paper aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by (i) documenting wide regional disparities in economic activity and infrastructure (especially between the north and the south), which were partly determined by regional development policy, and (ii) examining empirically to what extent spatial factors such as agglomeration economies contribute to labor productivity––and therefore to urban dynamics––using recent panel data from Côte d’Ivoire for the period from 1980 to 1996. |
| Keywords: | infrastructure productivity urban Cote d'Ivoire Ivory Coast Africa |
| JEL: | R O P D6 D7 H |
| Date: | 2005–10–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wpa:wuwpur:0510001&r=geo |
| By: | Stefano Federico; Gaetano Alfredo Minerva (SEMEQ Department - Faculty of Economics - University of Eastern Piedmont) |
| Abstract: | Using data from U±cio Italiano dei Cambi and Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, we empirically assess the impact of Italy's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on local employment growth between 1996 and 2001 for 12 manufacturing industries. We find that FDI towards advanced countries is associated with faster local employment growth, relatively to the national industry average. Local areas whose ¯rms invest more towards developing countries show instead an employment performance in line with the national industry average; only for two industries the relationship turns out to be negative. |
| Keywords: | Foreign direct investment; agglomeration; employment growth |
| JEL: | C21 F21 F23 |
| Date: | 2005–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upo:upopwp:102&r=geo |
| By: | Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano; Giovanni Peri |
| Abstract: | Recent influential empirical work has emphasized the negative impact immigrants have on the wages of U.S.-born workers, arguing that immigration harms less educated American workers in particular and all U.S.-born workers in general. Because U.S. and foreign born workers belong to different skill groups that are imperfectly substitutable, one needs to articulate a production function that aggregates different types of labor (and accounts for complementarity and substitution effects) in order to calculate the various effects of immigrant labor on U.S.-born labor. We introduce such a production function, making the crucial assumption that U.S. and foreign-born workers with similar education and experience levels may nevertheless be imperfectly substitutable, and allowing for endogenous capital accumulation. This function successfully accounts for the negative impact of the relative skill levels of immigrants on the relative wages of U.S. workers. However, contrary to the findings of previous literature, overall immigration generates a large positive effect on the average wages of U.S.-born workers. We show evidence of this positive effect by estimating the impact of immigration on both average wages and housing values across U.S. metropolitan areas (1970-2000). We also reproduce this positive effect by simulating the behavior of average wages and housing prices in an open city-economy, with optimizing U.S.-born agents who respond to an inflow of foreign-born workers of the size and composition comparable to the immigration of the 1990s. |
| JEL: | F22 J61 J31 R13 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11672&r=geo |
| By: | Roberto Ezcurra (Departamento de Economía-UPNA); Pedro Pascual (Departamento de Economía-UPNA); Manuel Rapún (Departamento de Economía-UPNA) |
| Abstract: | As a contribution to the study of intradistributional mobility, this paper introduces a family of functions whose usefulness as mobility measures is justi ed by di erent theoretical results. Indeed, as a particular case, this family includes the Bartholomew index, which is widely used in the literature devoted to the dynamic analysis of personal income distribution. The paper also contains, by way of example, an application to the study of mobility in regional per capita income distribution in the European Union between 1977 and 1999. |
| Keywords: | Mobility, income, transition matrices, regions, European Union. |
| JEL: | D30 R11 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nav:ecupna:0504&r=geo |
| By: | Gerardo A. Villa |
| Abstract: | En términos prácticos la descentralización fiscal hace parte de una estrategia para la orientación y movilización de recursos en tal forma que se obtenga un beneficio neto al momento de entregar servicios sociales a una comunidad. En consecuencia, gasto social y descentralización son dos caras de un mismo fenómeno: intervenir la economía de manera eficiente, ofreciendo, además, bienes y servicios de óptima calidad. Como efecto de la Constitución Política de 1991, aumentó el gasto social, realizado en gran proporción a través de los gobiernos subnacionales, aunque la satisfacción de los resultados aún resulta controversial. Estas notas propenden por dar una visión regional sobre la situación del gasto social en 2003. |
| Keywords: | Finanzas públicas territoriales, |
| Date: | 2005–06–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000124:001354&r=geo |
| By: | Russell Cooper; Hubert Kempf; Dan Peled |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the repayment of regional debt in a multi-region economy with a central authority: who pays the obligation issued by a region? With commitment, a central government will use its taxation power to smooth distortionary taxes across regions. Absent commitment, the central government may be induced to bailout the regional government in order to smooth consumption and distortionary taxes across the regions. We characterize the conditions under which bailouts occur and their welfare implications. The gains to creating a federation are higher when the (government spending) shocks across regions are negatively correlated and volatile. We use these insights to comment on actual fiscal relations in three quite different federations: the US, the European Union and Argentina. |
| JEL: | E6 F4 R5 |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11655&r=geo |