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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Lucia Cusmano; Andrea Morrison; Enrico Pandolfo |
| Abstract: | The origin and growth of industrial clusters have attracted the attention of scholars and policy makers since the early era of industrialisation. The seminal work by Alfred Marshall has represented the foundation for a rich strand of literature, whose late expansion and refinement were inspired by the experiences of localised development in emerging regions. This is the case of Italian industrial districts, which have emerged as a territorial model of industrial agglomeration, decentralised production and flexible specialisation. Recently, the traditional explananda of the emergence of clusters have been reconsidered. The evidence about the growth of clusters in areas that did not have obvious natural advantages, nor the first comers’ benefits of early agglomeration economies, has inspired a different conceptualisation, which draws consistently from the evolutionary perspective on industrial dynamics. Klepper (2001, 2010) shows that more successful firms have higher spin-off rates and their spin-offs tend to outperform competitors. Organizational reproduction and heredity are thus identified as the primary forces underlying clustering. The present paper investigates the emergence and evolution of an Italian industrial district, the Sassuolo tile district, one of the largest and most successful ceramic districts in the world, and a paradigmatic example of Italian Marshallian district. Overall, our findings confirm that organizational reproduction and heredity represent primary mechanisms of clustering. However, our results also show that spin-offs do not perform better than non-spin-offs. It appears that, in dense industrial environments and social networks, competitive advantages can also be acquired or built through other channels. |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1416&r=geo |
| By: | Guillermo Perry |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the potential for regional collective action in Latin America in the areas of finance, trade and infrastructure. Seven priority areas emerge. First, regional cooperation within increasingly important global financial and trade institutions (the G20, the Financial Stability Board, the Basle Committees, the IMF, the WTO, etc) may enhance the influence of the region in the pursuit of its common interests. Second, regional harmonization of financial markets regulations and cooperation in supervision could play a key role in achieving a safer and more efficient financial integration into the global economy. Integration of regional securities and insurance markets and setting up regional catastrophic insurance facilities may also bring significant efficiency gains. Third, some degree of collective pooling of reserves (through a Regional Monetary Fund) would also contribute to a safer and more efficient financial integration. Fourth, completing missing links in the “spaghetti-bowl” of regional (and extra regional) free trade areas (FTA´s), deepening trade liberalization within them and, especially, harmonizing rules of origin and other trade practices under current overlapping FTA’s, could render major efficiency benefits. Fifth, given that at present high freight costs are limiting trade expansion (especially intra-regional trade), even more than remaining tariffs and quotas, selected regional transport infrastructure initiatives and harmonization of regulatory frameworks can lead to significant efficiency gains. Cooperation in logistics and in maritime and air transport negotiations can also deliver large benefits. Sixth, regional infrastructure and regulation in telecommunications and energy can also lead to significant efficiency gains. Regional development banks can contribute to set up or strengthen specialized regional institutions required to solve the complex coordination, cost-allocation, financing and conflict resolution problems that are at present limiting regional collective action in these areas. |
| Keywords: | regional public goods, regional institutions, collective action, regional cooperation. |
| JEL: | F02 D02 G28 H41 |
| Date: | 2013–10–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:011888&r=geo |
| By: | Ignacio A. INOA; Nathalie PICARD; André de PALMA (Université de Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA; Université de Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA; Ecole Polytechnique, Departement d’Economie) |
| Abstract: | Residential location decision is often a household joint decision involving several decision-makers. These different decision-makers usually have diverging preferences, especially in dual-earner households, when spouses work at different locations. Since about half a century, literature on residential location has studied in great detail the influence of socio-demographic characteristics (and in particular the differences between females and males or between multiple-worker and single-worker households). However, there is no research devoted to the within-family joint decision process leading to residential location decision (and work-place decisions). In the context of Paris Area, we analyze differences between spouses’ values of commuting times and show that spouses’ disparities in commuting decisions is a key element in the intra-household decision process. The single-worker household approach leaves aside by construction important intra-household considerations that influence commuting time and accessibility to jobs. We review different models useful to study intra-household decisions in dual-earner households. To do that, we base our analysis on the framework introduced by Chiappori, de Palma, Picard, and Inoa (2013), which applies the collective approach of household behavior(Chiappori, 1988; Chiappori, 1992) to describe residential location choice of dual-earner households. This collective approach has been used in several economic fields, but not in urban and transport economics so far. Furthermore, we argue that the framework developed by Inoa, Picard, and de Palma (2013), can also be adapted to analyze the joint residential and job location decisions in a two-worker household. The analysis is based on two accessibility variables (one for each spouse) embedded in a three-level nested Logit model which is used to study the interdependence of residential and workplace locations, while accounting for variation of preferences for job types across individuals. |
| Keywords: | intra-household interaction, residential location, Paris region |
| JEL: | R21 R31 C35 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ema:worpap:2014-05&r=geo |
| By: | Camilo Andrés Acosta Mejía |
| Abstract: | En este documento se extiende un modelo teórico de la Nueva Geografía Económica, y, junto con una estrategia empírica, evalúa cómo el crecimiento del comercio internacional afecta la tasa de crecimiento poblacional de las aglomeraciones urbanas. Este enfoque se aplica para ciudades portuarias y ciudades del interior. La evidencia encontrada sugiere que, un aumento en la tasa de crecimiento del coeficiente de apertura lleva a un incremento de la tasa de crecimiento de la población de las ciudades portuarias, y a una disminución de la tasa de crecimiento de la población de las ciudades del interior. |
| Keywords: | aglomeración urbana, comercio internacional, ciudades portuarias, ciudades del interior, Nueva Geografía Económica. |
| JEL: | C23 F12 J61 O18 R12 |
| Date: | 2013–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:011890&r=geo |
| By: | Jorge Díaz Lanchas y Carlos Llano Verduras (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) |
| Abstract: | The border effect literature emphasizes the negative effect of distance on the international trade flows in favor of a greater proportion of trade within the national countries. However, recent works have shown that the border effect arises from a methodological error in measuring the distances within the international trade, having practically no effect when it is measured with the highest level of disaggregation. In this context, and using a micro-dataset about shipments by road within Spain during the period 2003-2007, we decompose the municipal trade flows into the intensive and extensive margin using different measures of transport costs, geographical distance and time, defined at the highest level of detail. Thus we see that, considering very detailed flows, the extensive margin increased a lot along the time, although the number of shipments (extensive margin) drops more sharply with increasing distance and time than the average value of such shipments (intensive margin). In contrast with previous studies, we find that the difference between the intensive and extensive margin is minimal when we consider time instead of distance. Furthermore, the total value of trade within the same municipality is much more important when we consider the time evolution (years). Finally, we find that regional borders have different effects on both margins, indeed provinces and autonomous regions don’t have a strong impact on trade, especially on the intensive margin. These findings provide more evidence about the “illusory” border effects problems that arise if statistical distance is measured in the aggregate rather than considering more detailed measures. |
| Keywords: | border effect, interregional trade, transport costs, intensive and extensive margin |
| JEL: | F10 F14 R40 |
| Date: | 2014–07–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cjz:ca41cj:22&r=geo |