Journal of Economic Geography

The US population has been migrating to places with high perceived quality of life. Theoretically, such migration can follow from the increasing demand for amenities that accompanies increasing wealth. Under the baseline calibration of a general equilibrium model, a place with amenities for which individuals would initially pay 5% of their income grows slightly faster than an otherwise identical place. As local quality of life becomes more important in determining relative population density, local productivity independently becomes less important. Together these two trends cause local amenities to eventually become the sole determinant of relative local density. From a quantitative perspective, high quality of life together with low relative productivity can boost metropolitan population growth by several percentage points.

The three largest cities in colonial America remain at the core of three of America's largest metropolitan areas today. This paper asks how Boston has been able to survive despite repeated periods of crisis and decline. Boston has reinvented itself three times: in the early 19^th century as the provider of seafaring human capital for a far flung maritime trading and fishing empire; in the late 19^th century as a factory town built on immigrant labor and Brahmin capital; and finally in the late 20^th century as a center of the information economy. In all three instances, human capital--admittedly of radically different forms--provided the secret to Boston's rebirth. The history of Boston suggests that a strong base of skilled workers is a more reliable source of long-run urban health. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Industrial revolution in the USA first took hold in rural New England as factories arose and grew in a handful of industries such as textiles and shoes. However, as factory scale economies rose and factory production techniques were adopted by an ever-growing number of industries, industrialization became concentrated in cities throughout the Northeastern region which came to be known as the manufacturing belt. While it is extremely difficult to rule out other types of agglomeration economies such as spillovers, this paper suggests that these geographic developments associated with industrial revolution in the USA are most consistent with explanations based on division of labor, job search, and matching costs. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Where transport costs were falling, were the new economic geography forces for industry agglomeration and dispersion at work in the location of industry in pre-1931 Britain? This paper examines the issue empirically using a general model that nests the Heckscher-Ohlin factor endowment with new economic geography models. The evidence suggests that while the location of pre-1931 British industry was mainly driven by the former, the scale economies aspect of the latter also played a role. © The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Where transport costs were falling, were the new economic geography forces for industry agglomeration and dispersion at work in the location of industry in pre-1931 Britain? This paper examines the issue empirically using a general model that nests the Heckscher-Ohlin factor endowment with new economic geography models. The evidence suggests that while the location of pre-1931 British industry was mainly driven by the former, the scale economies aspect of the latter also played a role. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

This article examines multiple dimensions of regional per capita income disparities in the USA between 1955 and 2003 with a particular focus on scalar effects. It combines various exploratory analytical tools of spatial disparities, including inequality indices, mobility indices, kernel density estimation, spatial autocorrelation statistics and scale variances, to analyse regional average per capita income distributions at multiple spatial scales, ranging from counties to multi-state regions. The analysis reveals previously unrecognised systematic patterns of cross-scalar dynamics, whereby spatial income disparities are increasingly more pronounced at smaller scales in the last few decades.

This article examines the changing roles of human capital in the process of the formation of industrial clusters, changes in marketing channels, and the relocation of the industrial base to less developed areas and abroad, based on a case study of a garment cluster in postwar Japan. We found, among other things, that experience as local traders played a major role in the cluster formation. However, formal schooling assumes greater importance in later stages, when direct transactions with large customers replaced transactions with local merchants, and the international relocation of the production base became a major management issue.

The geographic clustering of economic activity has long been understood in terms of economies of scale across space. This paper introduces the construct of geographies of scope, which we argue is driven by substantial, large-scale geographic concentrations of related skills, inputs and capabilities. We examine this through an empirical analysis of the entertainment industry across US metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000. Our findings indicate that geographies of scope (or collocation among key related entertainment subsectors and inputs) explain much of the economic geography of entertainment even when scale is controlled for, though our regressions over time suggest the role of scope is decreasing. Furthermore, we find that the entertainment sector as a whole and its key subsectors are significantly concentrated in two superstar cities—New York and Los Angeles—far beyond what their population size (or scale effects) can account for, while the pattern falls off dramatically for other large regions.

Using US county data, we estimate employment growth equations to analyze how the spatial distribution of jobs has changed between 1972 and 2000. We find that total employment has become increasingly concentrated. This aggregate picture hides important sectoral differences though: whereas non-service employment has been spreading out, service jobs have clustered in areas of high aggregate employment. By controlling for employment at different distances, we explicitly take into account the spatial dimension. This allows us to conclude that the spreading out of non-service jobs has benefitted counties 20 to 70 km away from large agglomerations, whereas the concentration of services has come at the expense of jobs in the surrounding 20 kilometers. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Over the past three decades, tariff barriers have fallen significantly, leading to an increasing integration of Canadian manufactures into world markets and especially the U.S. market. Much attention has been paid to the effects of this shift at the national scale, while little attention has been given to whether these effects vary across regions. In a country that spans a continent, there is ample reason to believe that the effects of trade will vary across regions. In particular, location has a significant effect on the size of markets available to firms, and this may impact the extent to which firms reorganize their production in response to falling trade barriers. Utilizing a longitudinal microdata file of manufacturing plants (1974 to 1999), this study tests the effect of higher levels of trade across regions on the organization of production within plants. The study finds that higher levels of export intensity (exports as a share of output) across regions are positively associated with longer production runs, larger plants and product specialization within plants. These effects are strongest in Ontario and Quebec, provinces that are best situated with respect to the U.S. market.

We examine how experiential learning and vicarious learning, as tied to a subsidiary's organizational geography, influence the exit rates of Japanese subsidiaries located in China. We find that exit rates were lower for subsidiaries that were established geographically proximate to the prior expansions of industry peers from Japan. Exit rates were also lower for subsidiaries established by firms with experience in similar product markets in China. Exit rates were greater, however, when a parent firm had substantial experience outside the product market of the current expansion. Importantly, the influence of a subsidiary's geographic proximity to its peers on its exit rate is contingent on whether its parent firm had prior experience inside or outside the product market of the new expansion. © The Author (2010). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] /* */

This paper examines the variation in gains and losses from migration within the Swedish urban hierarchy. The central questions focus on whether increases in disposable income outweigh the associated increases in housing costs, especially with movements up the urban hierarchy to larger and more expensive locations. The paper extends the literature which considers cost of living adjustments associated with individual and household migration. The questions are addressed using Swedish Census data for 3.5 million individuals and two fixed effect panel models are estimated for four consecutive time periods, 1993-2002. The results consistently show relatively higher increases in disposable income moving up the urban hierarchy. Taking changes in housing expenditure into account, this pattern is however reversed; the largest gains are made by households moving from larger to smaller labour markets, a significantly smaller share of total domestic migration. The results point to factors beyond short term nominal income gains as important in explaining the bulk of domestic migration.

Despite the rhetoric in the popular and business press trumpeting the removal of 'the limitations of geography', a number of researchers have demonstrated that rather than simply dispersing, the Internet in fact exhibits an uneven spatial pattern throughout the United States and world. Using a combination of interview and regression methodologies, this article argues that the regional distribution of venture capital investing played a central role in determining the location of new Internet startups. This was largely due to the premium that entrepreneurs placed on one of the hallmarks of venture capital, i.e. speed, and the reliance of venture capitalists upon local networks and knowledge for their investments. The ability to provide these types of value-added inputs in a timely manner is greatly assisted by geographic proximity. Rather than being an easily moved and fungible commodity, venture capital investing depends upon non-monetary inputs such as knowledge about possible investments and prefers to be close to companies in order to monitor and assist them. Thus, despite telecommunications technologies and global financial markets that have vastly expanded the geographic range of economic interaction, regions remain central to economic development in the current economy. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

We model and experimentally examine the board structure-performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards, and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than self-interested policies. Two-tiered boards adopt institutionally preferred policies more frequently but tend to destroy value by being too conservative, frequently rejecting good projects. Outsider-controlled single-tiered boards, both when they have multiple insiders and only a single insider, adopt institutionally preferred policies most frequently. In those board designs where the efficient Nash equilibrium produces strictly higher payoffs to all agents than the coalition-proof equilibria, agents tend to select the efficient Nash equilibria. Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press.

We examine European corporate governance with respect to the relationship between shareholder value and capital investment. Based upon Europe's largest listed companies, it is shown that Anglo-American conceptions of shareholder value are increasingly important for European firms whatever their home jurisdictions and inherited traditions. Using annual capital expenditures as a proxy for corporate managers' commitment to shareholder value it is shown contra arguments to the effect that the map of European corporate governance regimes is fixed and virtually immutable, even large firms from paradigmatic stakeholder regimes believed focused upon long-term value increasingly act to maximise short-term shareholder value. We divide Europe into three regions based on ownership concentration, legal systems, board structures, and the presence of corporate governance codes. In this multi-jurisdictional setting, we compare the effects of different elements of corporate governance on capital expenditures in each region. Our analysis shows that the overall effect of investor-sensitive corporate governance on capital expenditures is consistently negative notwithstanding differences in the formal nature and quality of governance standards between regions. We explain this finding by reference to the governance standards of United Kingdom: a market for corporate governance that has come to dominate its continental European neighbours.

This article examines the changes that occurred in the rail network and density of population in London during the 19th and 20th centuries. It aims to disentangle the ‘chicken and egg’ problem of which came first, network or land development, through a set of statistical analyses clearly distinguishing events by order. Using panel data representing the 33 boroughs of London over each decade from 1871 to 2001, the research finds that there is a positive feedback effect between population density and network density. Additional rail stations (either Underground or surface) are positive factors leading to subsequent increases in population in the suburbs of London, while additional population density is a factor in subsequently deploying more rail. These effects differ in central London, where the additional accessibility produced by rail led to commercial development and concomitant depopulation. There are also differences in the effects associated with surface rail stations and Underground stations, as the Underground was able to get into central London in a way that surface rail could not. However, the two networks were weak (and statistically insignificant) substitutes for each other in the suburbs, while the density of surface rail stations was a complement to the Underground in the center, though not vice versa.

This article explores the role of multinational enterprise groups in linking geographically bounded innovation collaboration networks to external sources of information. To investigate if the information content of the corporate network of affiliates increases with internationalization, we distinguish first between uninational and multinational networks. We then compare affiliation with MNE networks headquartered within the focal economy to affiliation with networks which are controlled from outside. Using Norwegian firm level innovation survey data, we find that the former is associated with the highest likelihood that affiliates combine local collaborative knowledge development outside the corporate network, and innovation search within it.

This paper studies geographic localization of academic and industrial knowledge spillovers. Using data on US research and development laboratories that quantify spatial aspects of learning about universities and firms as well as the locations of closely affiliated universities and firms, I find that academic spillovers are more localized than industrial spillovers. I also find that localization is increased by nearby stocks of R&D, but reduced by laboratory and firm size. These results on localized academic spillovers reflect the dissemination of normal science and the industry--university cooperative movement, which encourage firms to work with nearby universities, so that geographic localization coincides with the public goods nature of academic research. This situation contrasts with relations to other firms, where contractual arrangements are often needed to access proprietary information, often at a considerable distance. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

We study the impact of job proximity on individual employment and earnings. The analysis exploits a Swedish refugee dispersal policy to get exogenous variation in individual locations. Using very detailed data on the exact location of all residences and workplaces in Sweden, we find that having been placed in a location with poor job access in 1990–91 adversely affected employment in 1999. Doubling the number of jobs in the initial location in 1990–91 is associated with 2.9 percentage points higher employment probability in 1999. The analysis suggests that residential sorting leads to underestimation of the impact of job access.

The main purpose of this article is to assess the existence of an agglomeration rent in the French local tax setting. In order to perform that test, we first describe a simple economic geography model in which the main agglomeration force at work is the ‘market access effect’. We then estimate a derived tax-setting equation using spatial panel data for the period 1993–2003. We confirm a positive and significant relationship between the tax rate and market access, which suggests there is a taxable agglomeration rent in the French municipalities. We also observe significant mimic behaviour between French localities when they choose their rate of local business tax and vertical interactions between municipalities and regions.

This article critically evaluates the argument that, if developing countries had better institutions and policies and deeper financial markets, they would receive a boost to growth from capital account liberalization. The existing empirical record is ambiguous and leaves unanswered many of the important questions facing policy-makers. To test some predictions driving the case for capital account liberalization in developing countries, this article investigates the relationship between net capital inflows and medium-term economic growth within a sample of rich, institutionally advanced economies between 1984 and 2004. No evidence of a strong or statistically robust relationship between net capital inflows and future economic growth is found. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that net capital inflows are more strongly associated with past economic growth than with future economic growth. This result implies that capital account liberalization is not likely to boost growth, even among countries with the most appropriate institutions and policies.

This paper examines the geography of technological learning and knowledge acquisition among Taiwanese and Korean firms. Specifically it focuses on the knowledge sourcing experience of Asian manufacturing latecomers in the United States (US). The Asian latecomer model of learning is characterized by a triangular spatial division of knowledge sourcing and technological production that involves the transfer and circulation of knowledge across multiple spatial scales. At the regional level, Korean and Taiwanese firms rely on local learning systems in the form of science parks to create favorable domestic agglomeration economies that are conducive for knowledge accretion. At the trans-regional level, non-core R&D and the manufacturing of technology-driven products are geographically concentrated in China. Lastly, local and trans-regional learning are supplemented by international sourcing of knowledge through the location and investment of R&D facilities in the US. To the extent that extra-local knowledge sourcing in the US is associated with the acquisition of new knowledge forms, such a multiscalar spatial strategy is expected to help transform Asian learners from technology latecomer to technology newcomer status.

Cross-border mergers/acquisitions account for the bulk of contemporary foreign direct investment. Their significance, which is reinforcing the position of transnational corporations as the dominant institutional force in the global economy, is related to the nexus of processes implicated in international economic restructuring. Cross-border mergers/acquisitions are, therefore, important influences upon the evolution of the space economy, but this perspective on merger/acquisition activity has been neglected in academic research. This review makes connections between disparate literatures to identify potential lines of enquiry and attempts to situate these lines of enquiry within current research agendas in economic geography. On a basic level, mergers/acquisitions create new corporate geographies which represent valid objects of research in the geography of enterprise tradition. However, these corporate geographies are set within the institutional context of social, economic, and political relations. Many of the most interesting research questions derive from these contextual relations which are addressed with reference to issues of embeddedness at various geographical scales and also by linking these issues to aspects of employment and territorial development. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

In this article, we try to measure the dialogue between economists and geographers. It has been argued that this dialogue can be best described as one of ‘mutual neglect’ but quantitative evidence is scarce. Our main data set covers all references from the first decade of the Journal of Economic Geography. Based on our results, the ‘mutual neglect’ obervation should be qualified. First, and correcting for the fact that geographers generally cite more than economists, geographers significantly cross-reference more to the neighboring field of economics than vice versa. Second, and perhaps most importantly, although the description of a non-debate might still hold in general, it clearly does so to a lesser extent when looking at the cross-references of geographers and economists in our data set.

The standard deviation of metropolitan per capita personal income (PCPI) and metropolitan average wage per job (AWPJ) provide straightforward indicators of unconditional sigma convergence for metropolitan economies within the United States. Using data for all metropolitan areas in the continental United States for the period 1969–2001, we tested for the unconditional sigma income convergence hypothesis by applying two unit root tests to the time series of the two standard deviations. Our results indicate that the time series can be described as random walks with drift, thereby supporting the claim that income divergence among metropolitan economies is not decreasing.

This article is devoted to an investigation of the forms of human capital that characterize cities at different levels of the US urban hierarchy. Basic data on human capital are drawn from the O*Net information system. A first analytical exercise shows that for the USA as a whole, occupations marked by broadly cognitive human capital assets gained in employment over the period from 2000 to 2006, whereas employment in occupations marked by broadly physical human capital assets declined. These same types of assets bear a distinctive relationship to the urban hierarchy, with the former being concentrated in large metropolitan areas, and the latter in small. Changes in these assets over the 2000–2006 period are then examined. Surprisingly, cognitive assets increased most strongly in small metropolitan areas and physical assets increased most strongly in large. Further analysis of these findings suggests that they are quite consistent with a wider view of the contemporary urban economy. In particular, in large metropolitan areas, expanding human capital assets focused on the physical abilities of workers has nothing to do with the ‘old’ economy as such, but represents a major—and hitherto much overlooked—segment of the labor force whose functions revolve around the maintenance of the material and social fabric of life in those areas.

Within professional service firms (PSFs), capital accumulation is dependent upon the embodied knowledge, skills, practice and trustworthiness of fee-earning staff. In legal PSFs, clients purchase idiosyncratic knowledge from individuals which are supplied through close-interaction, co-location and proximity. Legal firms expatriate staff to export English Common Law to their international offices, but simultaneously, employ the services of 'local' staff to practice local jurisdiction law. But, as this analysis of knowledge management and expatriation within London-headquartered firms proceeds, the findings indicate that expatriation is not homogenous for every region of the globe. In east Asia, expatriation followed a 'Multinational' typology, characterized by one-way knowledge diffusion from London and a demarcation of labour where expatriates manage offices, departments and teams. In contrast, expatriation in Europe and North America reflected a 'Transnational' typology, where knowledge was developed and diffused in a network of relationships. Here, expatriates worked with locally qualified partners and lawyers, and expatriates of other nationalities, in an environment where locals, expatriates of other nationalities and British qualified staff manage, held partnerships and lead teams. In such circumstances, expatriation was a process creating 'transnational communities' within the firm. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Manufacturing Possibilities examines adjustment dynamics in the steel, automobile and machinery industries in Germany, the U.S., and Japan since World War II. As national industrial actors in each sector try to compete in global markets, the book argues that they recompose firm and industry boundaries, stakeholder identities and interests and governance mechanisms at all levels of their political economies. Micro level study of industrial transformation in this way provides a significant window on macro level processes of political economic change in the three societies. Theoretically, the book marks a departure from both neoliberal economic and historical institutionalist perspectives on change in advanced political economies. It characterizes industrial change as a creative, bottom up process driven by reflective social actors. This alternative view consists of two distinctive claims. The first is that action is social, reflective, and ultimately creative. When their interactive habits are disrupted, industrial actors seek to repair their relations by reconceiving them. Such imaginative interaction redefines interest and causes unforeseen possibilities for action to emerge, enabling actors to trump existing rules and constraints. Second, industrial change driven by creative action is recompositional. In the social process of reflection, actors rearrange, modify, reconceive, and reposition inherited organizational forms and governance mechanisms as they experiment with solutions to the challenges that they face. Continuity in relations is interwoven with continuous reform and change. Most remarkably, creativity in the recomposition process makes the introduction of entirely new practices and relations possible. Ultimately, the message of Manufacturing Possibilities is that social study of change in advanced political economies should devote itself to the discovery of possibility. Preoccupation with constraint and failure to appreciate the capaciousness of reflective social action has led much of contemporary debate to misrecognize the dynamics of change. As a result, discussion of the range of adjustment possibilities in advanced political economies has been unnecessarily limited. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/management/9780199557738/toc.html

Global economic integration is often viewed as a process orchestrated from 'above' by constituents of an emergent transnational class. Yet such perspectives neglect the autonomous contributions made from 'below' by subnational political coalitions that mediate between global and local interests. In this article we consider the issue of political mobilization at the subnational scale around the material and discursive interests of mobile capital. We highlight the mechanisms that mediate the tension between global and local interests and examine how this tension is articulated at multiple scales. We draw on empirical work in the United States and United Kingdom to illustrate the complex translation between 'global' capital and 'local' political coalitions. We conclude by sketching out the implications of our discussion for research on the role of political coalitions in fostering modernization through inward investment and upon some of the attendant policy implications. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

This article investigates the role of disintegration for the adaptability of clusters. It develops a simulation model to test when disintegrated flexible specialization clusters can be more adjustable than those with firm centred, quasi-integrated production networks. The benefits to flexible specialization are conditional on limited product complexity and greater firm numbers. Moreover, flexible specialization increases the risk of firm failure. For the viability of such clusters, strong start-up dynamics are therefore required. These results provide an explanation for the contrasting evidence on flexible specialization and adaptability in Italian districts and the Silicon Valley Boston 128 case.

This article looks at the role of market complementarities in developing new carbon markets. I argue that markets are composed of social as well as economic networks. The reliance of these networks on social connectivity and proximity makes the development of new markets particularly suited to established financial centers like London and New York and reinforces the importance of these centers. London and New York provide not only resources and financial infrastructure, but also institutional proximity that develops routines and practices between complementary firms. I investigate three levels of complementarity between (existent and new) markets and within the new carbon markets: the complementarity of expertise and information, the complementarity of institutions and services and the complementarity of market systems. Case studies constructed from expert interviews in London and New York are used to support the argument. This article concludes by commenting on the dialectic nature of financial agglomeration and market embeddedness.

For reasons of analytical tractability, new economic geography (NEG) models treat geography in a very simple way: attention is either confined to a simple 2-region or to an equidistant multi-region world. As a result, the main predictions regarding the impact of e.g. diminishing trade costs are based on these simple models. When doing empirical or policy work these simplifying assumptions become problematic and it may very well be that the conclusions from the simple models do not carry over to the heterogeneous geographical setting faced by the empirical researcher or policy maker. This paper tries to fill this gap by adding more realistic geography structures to the Puga (1999) model that encompasses several benchmark NEG models. By using extensive simulations we show that many, although not all, conclusions from the simple models do carry over to our multi-region setting with more realistic geography structures. Given these results, we then simulate the impact of increased EU integration on the spatial distribution of regional economic activity for a sample of 194-NUTSII regions and find that further integration will most likely be accompanied by higher levels of agglomeration.

A growing body of research focuses on banking organizational issues, emphasizing the culties encountered by hierarchically organized banks in lending to borrowers/projects with high intensity of soft information. However, as the two extreme cases of hierarchical and non-hierarchical organizations are typically contrasted, what actually shapes the degree of hierarchy and how to measure it remain fairly vague. In this paper we compare bank size and distance between bank's branches and headquarter as possible sources of organizational frictions. In particular, we study the impact of distance and bank size on the firms' likelihood of introducing innovations and financing constraints on a sample of Italian SMEs. Our results show that firms located in provinces where the local banking system is functionally distant are less inclined to introduce innovations and are more likely to be credit rationed. Conversely, we find that the market share of large banks is only rarely statistically significant and when it is, the economic impact on the probability of introducing innovation and credit rationing is appreciably smaller than that of functional distance.