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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Tödtling, Franz; Auer, Alexander |
| Abstract: | Innovation is nowadays a highly interdependent process where firms rely on distributed knowledge sources at various spatial scales. It has been argued that innovation interactions are shifting increasingly from local/regional towards global scales and that the region as a space for supporting innovation and competitiveness of firms is losing in importance. We suggest, however, that firms and clusters rely on various kinds of knowledge bases and factors for their development that differ in their geographical mobility and territorial boundedness. Whereas codified knowledge as well as many kinds of goods and services, investment capital, and people have become mobile at a global scale due to improvements of transport- and communication technologies and a lowering of trade barriers, we find other factors that are still territorially bound, such as tacit knowledge that is exchanged in local and social networks, and certain kinds institutions and regulations that are territorially confined. We investigate therefore for different types of industries to what extent and which kind of driving factors for cluster development and innovation have become non-local or footlose, or remain territorially bound to regions or countries. This also has relevance for regional and innovation policies that try to enhance the competitiveness of clusters and regional economies. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wus009:5937&r=geo |
| By: | Nicola Cortinovis (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Frank van Oort (ESE EUR, IHS EUR, Utrecht University) |
| Abstract: | Productivity across European regions is related to three types of networks that mediate R&D-related knowledge spillovers: trade, co-patenting and geographical proximity. Both our panel and instrumental variable estimations for European regions suggest that network relations are crucial sources of R&D spillovers, but with potentially different features. While co-patenting relations appear to affect local productivity directly, regions that link up to innovative leader regions via imports gain in productivity only when they have relatively high levels of human capital and absorptive capacity. From a policy perspective, this may frustrate recent European policy initiatives, such as Smart Specialization, that are designed to benefit all regions in Europe. |
| Keywords: | productivity; economic networks; regions; Europe; trade; knowledge |
| JEL: | R11 R12 O33 O47 |
| Date: | 2017–12–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20170118&r=geo |
| By: | Giuseppe Calignano; Rune Dahl Fitjar; Dieter Franz Kogler |
| Abstract: | Cluster policy is often ineffective in peripheral regions with weak institutions and significant barriers to knowledge production and exchange. Nonetheless, many peripheral regions have pursued such policies in recent years, an example being technology districts in Southern Italy. This paper examines one such district, the aerospace district in Apulia, where policy has focused on indirect support for networking through coordination. This has led to a substantial increase in knowledge exchange within the district, but also to a heavy dependence on the cluster organization itself as the key actor in the knowledge exchange network. |
| Keywords: | Clusters, Technology districts, Policy evaluation, Innovation networks, Knowledge exchange, Social network analysis |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1730&r=geo |
| By: | Montmartin, B.; Herrera, M.; Massard, N. |
| Abstract: | Using a unique database containing information on the amount of R&D tax credits and regional, national and European subsidies received by firms in French NUTS3 regions over the period 2001-2011, we provide new evidence on the efficiency of R&D policies taking into account spatial dependency across regions. By estimating a spatial Durbin model with regimes and fixed effects, we show that in a context of yardstick competition between regions, national subsidies are the only instrument that displays total leverage effect. For other instruments internal and external effects balance each other resulting in insignificant total effects. Structural breaks corresponding to tax credit reforms are also revealed. |
| Keywords: | ADDITIONALITY;FRENCH POLICY MIX;R&D INVESTMENT;SPATIAL PANEL;STRUCTURAL BREAK |
| JEL: | H25 O31 O38 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gbl:wpaper:2017-06&r=geo |
| By: | Sabine D’Costa; Enrique Garcilazo; Joaquim Oliveira Martins |
| Abstract: | Using a panel of 265 regions from 24 OECD countries from 1997 to 2007, we explore the impact of nation-wide macroeconomic and structural policies on the productivity growth of subnational regions. We find that average relationships between nation-wide policies and the growth of regions can hide strong differentiated effects according to the distance to the frontier: relaxing employment protection legislation on temporary contracts, lowering barriers to trade and investment as well as increasing trade openness enhances productivity growth in lagging regions, whereas reducing barriers to entrepreneurship or higher levels of government debt has a positive effect on regions that are closer to the productivity frontier. |
| Keywords: | structural reforms; regional growth; lagging regions |
| JEL: | R11 R58 O18 |
| Date: | 2017–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgs:wpaper:86&r=geo |
| By: | Sylvain Dejean (CEREGE - Centre de Recherche en sciences de Gestion - EA 1722 - La Rochelle - ULR - Université de La Rochelle) |
| Abstract: | Does the distance still matters in a context where digital technologies promised to eliminate distance-related costs? In crowdfunding platforms, the founder of a project and the backers mainly exchange tacit information (trustworthiness and seriousness of the founder, feasibility of a project), challenging the ability of the Internet to abolish the cost of distance. We investigate how the existence of social ties between two geographical areas, by lowering the asymmetry of information, can shape the flow of funding in a given country. We take advantage of a unique database provided by the French leader of reward-based Crowdfunding. With a dataset containing 12887 projects and 452 850 contributions representing a value of 19 million euros over the period 2012/2015, we estimate, for each pair of the 94 French regions, the number and the amount of bilateral funding as well as their determinants in a gravity-like equation model. To account for the existence of social ties between French regions we exploit information of the French national Census of 2013 about regional migration. Our mains results are first that the elasticity of distance is still important (around 0.5) in the context of reward-based crowdfunding platforms. We then show that taking into account the existence of social ties between regions strongly reduces and even annihilates (under some specifications) the impact of distance. This result suggests that if digital technology could have reduced the geographical distance, only social proximity seems able to decrease the information-related costs. |
| Keywords: | Crowdfunding,economic geography,gravity,social networks |
| Date: | 2017–11–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01645147&r=geo |
| By: | Fedorets, Alexandra; Stops, Michael (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Lottmann, Franziska |
| Abstract: | "Job mobility equilibrates disparities on local labor markets and influences the efficiency of the job matching process. In this paper, we describe a job matching model that allows for simultaneous regional and occupational mobility, predicting corresponding spillover effects on the number of matches. We estimate these spillover effects based on novel administrative German data on the number of matches, unemployed, and vacancies of local labor markets, which we define as distinct occupations in distinct regions. We specify a matching function for these local labor markets with regional spillovers, occupational spillovers, as well as combined regional and occupational spillovers of unemployed and vacancies. To construct these spillover terms, we use information on the proximity between regions and on similarities between occupations in terms of qualification requirements and tasks. We find that regional spillover effects for both vacancies and the unemployed are positive, occupational spillover effects for vacancies are positive and occupational spillover effects for the unemployed are negative. The combined regional and occupational spillover effects for both vacancies and the unemployed are positive. We conclude that neglecting regional, occupational, and combined spillovers leads to biased estimates of job matching efficiency in local labor markets." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | C21 C23 J44 J64 |
| Date: | 2017–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201735&r=geo |
| By: | Yasmine Essafi (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris-Dauphine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Raphaël Languillon (EVS - Environnement Ville Société - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon III - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne - ENSAL - École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Arnaud Simon (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris-Dauphine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Using the link between demography and house prices in a life-cycle economy perspective, this article documents the ongoing spatial reshaping of wealth in France due to the elder-boom breaking point. This modification in the wealth circulation across generations is also a spatial modification that carries consequences for the local territories. While the wealth losses are amplified for some departments, others benefit from the reorganization. Metropolization is insurance against important wealth losses, whereas for the nonmetropolitan departments, a combination of second-order factors is required to limit or reverse the negative trend. Our results suggest that these evolutions are mainly structural and that the economic variables are of secondary importance. There is no case of compensation for structural decline by a positive cyclical trend. Gentrification also appears to be a direct and emblematic avatar of this change, in which various macrostructural inequalities are reinforced. As for the unemployment rate, this indicator poorly reflects the shift and can be misleading. |
| Keywords: | Ageing,Life-cycle,Spatial reshaping,Territories,Metropolization |
| Date: | 2017–12–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01654445&r=geo |
| By: | Langer, Sebastian; Korzhenevych, Artem |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to quantify the municipal tax revenue effects of built-up area increases. The assumed existence of these effects is one of the key reasons for ongoing land consumption on the side of the municipalities. Some previous case studies however suggested that these effects might be not large enough especially in rural municipalities and would thus make land development not profitable. We estimate the effect of built-up industrial and commercial (BIC) area change on the business tax revenues in cross-sectional instrumental variable (IV) estimations. Based on detailed data for Bavaria, we find a significant and positive tax revenue effect of an increase in municipal BIC area. There exist strong differences in the size of this effect between urban and rural municipalities. The largest effects are generated by the BIC area in the large cities and become substantially smaller when these are dropped from the sample. Based on these findings, we reflect on the tradable planning permits (TPP) scheme recently discussed in the land use literature in the context of policies aiming to limit land consumption. Furthermore, we relate our estimates to the average municipal costs for land development and execute a number of robustness checks. |
| Keywords: | tax revenues,municipal taxes,land consumption,instrumental variable regression |
| JEL: | H21 H25 H70 H71 R14 R52 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tudcep:1817&r=geo |