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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Sue Konzelmann; Frank Wilkinson |
| Abstract: | Liberal economics has traditionally put strong emphasis on individualisation and specialisation – and has struggled with the notion of co-operation. Thus, Alfred Marshall's pioneering work on the English industrial districts of his day posed a significant challenge to the conventional wisdom, which embraced laissez-faire markets and Adam Smith's claim that improvements in efficiency depend upon the increased division of labour within firms competing in them. Marshall found that an important determinant of the competitive success of industrial districts was effective co-operation within and between firms, supported by a dense network of institutions, and markets regulated by agreed rules, norms and standards. He theorised that these generate external economies of scale and scope that enable the district and its constituent small firms to successfully compete with large, vertically integrated firms. From the mid-1920s, however, with the emergence and growth of very large, highly successful firms, the conventional wisdom shifted to suppose that the historical tendency in capitalist development was towards large firm dominance; and the small firm sector was progressively reduced to a residuum. However, the rediscovery of the industrial district by Italian scholars during the 1960s revived interest in Marshall's notion of localised productive systems and attracted considerable attention to this form of industrial organisation. This paper traces themes within this literature, from the earliest theorising by the Classical Political Economists to the present, focusing on the role of co-operation in production, the relationship between the organisation of production and markets, and the nature and functioning of productive systems. |
| Keywords: | Industrial Districts, Productive Systems, Co-operation and Competition, Industrial Organisation |
| JEL: | B00 L00 |
| Date: | 2016–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp481&r=geo |
| By: | Tonnerre, Antoine |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it surveys different works related to the analysis of Innovation and the way it spreads locally. We will see that theoretical predictions and empirical facts are rather contradictory. This will lead us, secondly, to shedding light towards the concentration of innovative activities in the European Union, at a more precise level of analysis: the NUTS2 nomenclature. We contradict the usually accepted empirical fact that innovative activities tend to be less and less concentrated, thus supporting the theory of knowledge spillovers, which is probably due to the important changes the European Union went through in terms of trade structure. This claim relies on a rather simple but well-founded analysis. Patent applications to the European Patent Office will be used as a proxy for the level of Innovation. These patent applications have a geographical component that will be exploited to determine whether spatial autocorrelation of innovative activities is present. After showing the importance of considering spatial autocorrelation in an analysis of Innovation, we will propose an empirical methodology to assess how it spreads. Regarding this, no results are presented, as it goes beyond the scope of the paper. |
| Keywords: | Innovation, knowledge spillovers, spatial concentration, spatial autocorrelation, empirics, patents, European Union, NUTS2. |
| JEL: | O31 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–07–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80116&r=geo |
| By: | Reinhold Kosfeld; Christian Dreger |
| Abstract: | The relevance of spatial effects in the wage curve can be rationalized by the model of monopsonistic competition in regional labour markets. However, distortions in extracting the regional unemployment effects arise in standard regional (i.e. NUTS) classifications as they fail to adequately capture spatial processes. In addition, the nonstationarity of wages and unemployment is often ignored. Both issues are particularly important in high unemployment regimes like East Germany where a wage curve is difficult to establish. In this paper, labour market regions defined by economic criteria are used to examine the existence of an East German wage curve. Due to the nonstationarity of spatial data, a global panel cointegration approach is adopted. By specifying a spatial error correction model (SpECM), equilibrium adjustments are investigated in time and space. The analysis gives evidence on a locally but not a spatially cointegrated wage curve for East Germany. |
| Keywords: | Wage curve, labour market regions, global cointegration, spatial error-correction model |
| JEL: | J30 J60 C33 R15 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1675&r=geo |
| By: | Braunerhjelm, Pontus (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Ding, Ding (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Thulin, Per (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | Presenting The Knowledge Spillover Theory of Intrapreneurship, we examine how labour mobility impacts innovation distributed on firm size. A matched employer-employee dataset, pooled with firm-level patent application data, is implemented in the analysis. We provide new evidence that knowledge workers’ mobility has a positive and strongly significant impact on all firms’ innovation output, measured as patent applications. The patterns and effects differ between large and small firms. More precisely, for small firms, intraregional mobility of knowledge workers that have previously worked in a patenting firm (the learning-by-hiring effect) are shown to be statistically and economically highly significant, whereas only limited impact could be detected for firms losing knowledge workers (the-learning-by-diaspora effect). |
| Keywords: | Labour mobility; knowledge diffusion; innovation; social networks |
| JEL: | J24 O31 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–07–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0459&r=geo |
| By: | de Vos, Duco (Delft University of Technology); Meijers, Evert J. (Delft University of Technology); van Ham, Maarten (Delft University of Technology) |
| Abstract: | It is generally found that workers are more inclined to accept a job that is located farther away from home if they have the ability to work from home one day a week or more (telecommuting). Such findings inform us about the effectiveness of telecommuting policies that try to alleviate congestion and transport related emissions, but they also stress that the geography of labour markets is changing due to information technology. We argue that estimates of the effect of working from home on commuting time are biased downward because most studies ignore preference based sorting (self-selection): workers who dislike commuting, and hence have shorter commutes, might also be more likely to work from home. In this paper we investigate to what extent working from home affects the willingness to accept a longer commute and we control for preference based sorting. We use 7 waves of data from the Dutch Labour Supply Panel and show that on average telecommuters have a 50 percent higher marginal cost of one-way commuting time, compared to non-telecommuters. We estimate the effect of telecommuting on commuting time using a fixed-effects approach and we show that preference based sorting biases cross-sectional results 27-28 percent downwards. Working from home allows people to accept 5.7 percent longer commuting times on average, and every additional 8 hours of working from home are associated with 3 percent longer commuting times. |
| Keywords: | telecommuting, commuting time, job search, job mobility, labour market area |
| JEL: | J32 R11 R41 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10875&r=geo |
| By: | Brata, Aloysius Gunadi |
| Abstract: | This study explores the impact on Java’s economic geography of railways built by the Dutch colonial government. Pre-1940 Dutch railway construction affords an historical experiment on the spatial distribution of economic activities across urban Java both before and after 1940. Using city data for over 100 years, the study finds that the railways had a short-term impact on the distribution of population, but that in the long run colonial railway investment lost its advantages. Until 1930, the railways substituted for the Great Mail Road. Between 1930 and 2010, however, the Great Mail Road regained an earlier importance in shaping urban Javanese patterns. The study also draws important lessons for recent Indonesian infrastructure development in Indonesia, notably in regard to the railway system itself. |
| Keywords: | colonial railways, history, economic geography, Java |
| JEL: | N75 N95 R12 |
| Date: | 2017–07–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80097&r=geo |
| By: | Paul Van Rompuy |
| Abstract: | This paper focusses on the relationship between subnational fiscal autonomy, transport infrastructure investment and regional disparities in 30 OECD countries over the period 1995-2011. Subnational fiscal autonomy is approximated by the revenue share of autonomous taxes. A fixed effects panel estimation reveals that SNG tax autonomy significantly contributes to regional convergence although its impact is small when compared to the effect of transport infrastructure investment. Subnational expenditure on education and economic affairs does not impact spatial disparities. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:ceswps:584998&r=geo |
| By: | Yasuhiro Sato (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo); Masaaki Toma (　Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the transition of the spatial distribution of human capital by using data on Japanese prefectures. We find substantive concentration of university enrollments in Tokyo and its neighboring prefectures. After graduation, slight dispersal occurs but the movements are limited to neighboring prefectures. Moreover, we examine the relationship between human capital distributions of different cohorts, and find that the concentration of university graduates of a particular age group attracts university graduates of adjacent age groups. However, such an effect becomes insignificant and sometimes opposite as the age differences grow. |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2017cf1046&r=geo |
| By: | Daniel S. Grossman (West Virginia University, Department of Economics); Brad R. Humphreys (West Virginia University, Department of Economics); Jane E. Ruseski (West Virginia University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) administers and partially funds investment projects designed to improve economic conditions in the Appalachian Region, an area of persistent poverty and reduced economic opportunity in the eastern US in and around the Appalachian mountains. Previous research on the effectiveness of ARC programs is mixed. We analyze the impact of ARC investment projects related to expanding sewerage and waste water treatment on dwelling characteristics. Results from a difference-in-differences model using a quasi experimental approach show that ARC investment projects improved access to running water, and increased sewer hook-ups and indoor bathrooms in dwellings. |
| Keywords: | Appalachian Region, place-based policy, infrastructure investment |
| JEL: | R5 R23 I1 H2 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wvu:wpaper:17-10&r=geo |