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Agglomeration Forces (agglomeration + force)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	75%

Selected Abstracts

PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,

JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2009
Antonella Nocco
ABSTRACT We investigate the effect of preference heterogeneity between skilled and unskilled workers on agglomeration, and we identify a new source of dependence of equilibrium prices on the demand properties shaped by the inter-regional distribution of workers. We find a new preference effect, and we show that when the intensity of skilled workers' preference for the modern good and its variety is strong enough, prices charged by firms may even increase when the mass of local firms increases, therefore acting as a new dispersion force when trade costs are low or as a new agglomeration force when trade costs are high. [source]

The effect of information and communication technologies on urban structure

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 54 2008
Yannis M. Ioannides
SUMMARY Cities This paper examines the effects of information and communication technologies (ICT) on urban structure. Improvements in ICT may lead to changes in urban structure, for example, because they reduce the costs of communicating ideas from a distance. Hence, they may weaken local agglomeration forces and thus provide incentives for economic activity to relocate to smaller urban centres. We use international data on city size distributions in different countries and on country-level characteristics to test the effect of ICT. We find robust evidence that increases in the number of telephone lines per capita encourage the spatial dispersion of population in that they lead to a more concentrated distribution of city sizes. So far the evidence on internet usage is more speculative, although it goes in the same direction. We argue that the internet is likely to have similar, or even larger, effects on urban structures once its use has spread more thoroughly through different economies. , Yannis M. Ioannides, Henry G. Overman, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and Kurt Schmidheiny [source]

Integration and transition: Scenarios for the location of production and trade in Europe

THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 1 2002
Rikard Forslid
Applying a newly developed CGE-model, we present scenarios for the future economic geography of Europe. The model divides the world into ten regions, five of which are European, and 14 industries, of which 12 are imperfectly competitive. With a complete input-output structure, the model captures comparative advantage mechanisms as well as intra-industry trade and ,new economic geography' agglomeration forces. The simulations focus on the consequences of successful transformation in Eastern Europe. The results indicate that transformation and European integration are of great importance for Eastern Europe, while the overall effects for other European regions are small. Individual sectors in the EU, such as Textiles and Transport Equipment, are, however, in some cases strongly affected. JEL classification: C68, F12, F17, R11. [source]

Fiscal Incentives, European Integration and the Location of Foreign Direct Investment

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 3 2002
Florence Hubert
Foreign direct investment in the European Economic Area (EEA) has grown rapidly in recent years. This paper tests for structural change in the geographical and industrial pattern of foreign direct investment in Europe using a panel data set on outward investment by German companies in the EEA since 1980. There is evidence of significant structural change since 1990, with nearly all locations and industries seeing a higher level of cross,border investment than might have been expected. We also investigate the scope for national governments to affect location choice through the use of fiscal instruments such as corporation taxes, investment in infrastructure and other forms of development grants and subsidies. The findings are mixed. Some measures, such as tax competitiveness, appear important but are sensitive to the specification of the model. However, the level of government fixed investment expenditure relative to that in other economies is found to have a significant positive impact, particularly in locations with less need for EU structural funds. Although the direct marginal impact appears relatively small, an additional finding of significant agglomeration forces suggests that fiscal policies could still have a permanent influence on the location of economic activities. [source]