Miren Lafourcade

Université Paris-Saclay · Economics

This paper providesempirical support to the intuitive statement that urban geography matters to the success or failure of place-based public policies, using the French enterprise zone program as a case study. According to the few existing evaluations, this program has only had a small positive average impact on firm and job creation rates. In addit...

This paper studies the evolution and determinants of spatial inequalities in France. To this end, we use a unique database providing data on value-added, employment, and population over the entire set of French “Départements” in 1860, 1896, 1930, 1982, and 2000. These data cover three sectors: Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Services. Firstly, we c...

This paper evaluates, in the context of economic geography estimates, the magnitude of the distortions arising from the choice of a specific zoning system, which is also known as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). We undertake three standard economic geography exercises (the analysis of spatial concentration, agglomeration economies, and tra...

Using theory-grounded estimations of trade flow equations, this paper investigates the role that business and social networks play in shaping trade between French regions. The bilateral intensity of networks is quantified using the financial structure and location of French firms and bilateral stocks of migrants. Compared to a situation without net...

This paper investigates whether the geographic distribution of manufacturing activities depends on the size of plants. Using Italian data, we find, as in Kim [Kim, S., 1995. Expansion of markets and the geographic concentration of economic activities: the trends in U.S. regional manufacturing structure, 1860–1987, Quarterly Journal of Economics 110...

CEPR Discussion Paper

This paper investigates the causal impact of city shape on car use and emissions within French metropolitan areas. We in particular analyze the influence of a novel indicator of urban geometry that captures differences in the built environment likely to nurture or alleviate car dependence. Individual data allow us to separate the effects of urban g...

Malgré les multiples politiques conduites depuis près de trente ans pour venir en aide aux habitants des ghettos urbains que sont devenues certaines banlieues françaises, la situation y demeure extrêmement difficile. Pauvreté, chômage, échec scolaire, faible accès aux soins, violence : comment enrayer la spirale négative dans laquelle sont entraîné...

This paper providesempirical support to the intuitive statement that urban geography matters to the success or failure of place-based public policies, using the French enterprise zone program as a case study. According to the few existing evaluations, this program has only had a small positive average impact on firm and job creation rates. In addit...

The paper assesses the trade-creating impact of foreign-born residents on the international imports and exports of the French regions where they are settled. The pro-trade effect of immigrants is investigated along two intertwined dimensions: the complexity of traded goods and the quality of institutions in partner countries. The trade-enhancing im...

The chapter surveys the main contributions of new economic geography from the point of view of transport analysis. It shows that decreasing transport costs is likely to exacerbate regional disparities. However, very low transport costs should foster a more balanced distribution for economic activities across space. Thus, the spatial curve of develo...

This paper evaluates the role of competition and input–output market access in shaping the geography of economic activity. In a first step, we develop a multi-region multi-industry economic geography model under Cournot competition, of which we estimate the parameter values from French data. We then turn to simulations to see whether a core–periphe...

An augmented gravity model is used to investigate whether the 1978-2000 process of European integration has changed the geography of trade within France, with a particular focus on border regions. It is found that once controlled for bilateral distance, origin- and destination-specific characteristics, French border regions trade on average 73% mor...

La région Île-de-France, dont la superficie n’excède pas 2 % du territoire national, accueille plus de 23 % des entreprises françaises. Quelles sont les forces qui poussent les activités économiques à se concentrer ainsi dans l’espace ? Les zones éloignées des grands marchés sont-elles condamnées au sous-développement ? Pourquoi certaines entrepris...

Regional economic growth in Portugal has mainly been studied from the perspective of convergence with data ending by the early 2000’s. The country as a whole has stopped converging to the output levels of the richest European countries by this period and has also become one of the most unequal EU member-states in terms of income distribution in the...

This paper uses an augmented gravity model to investigate whether the 1978-2000 process of European integration has changed the geography of trade within France, with a particular focus on the trends experienced by border regions. We support the conclusion that, once controlled for bilateral distance, origin- and destination-specific characteristic...

The paper surveys the main contributions of new economic geography from the point of view of transport analysis. It shows that decreasing transport costs is likely to exacerbate regional disparities. However, very low transport costs should foster a more balanced distribution for economic activities across space. Thus, the spatial curve of developm...

This paper evaluates, in the context of economic geography estimations, the magnitude of the distortions possibly induced by the choice of a given spatial nomenclature, something also known as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (henceforth MAUP). Based on three stan-dard economic geography exercises (the analyze of spatial concentration, of agglomer...

This paper investigates whether the geographic distribution of manufacturing activities depends on the size of plants. Using Italian data we find, as in Kim (1995) and Holmes and Stevens (2002, 2004), that large plants are more concentrated than small plants. However, considering distance-based patterns via spatial auto-correlation, we find that sm...

Using theory-grounded estimations of trade flow equations, this paper investigates the role that business and social networks play in shaping trade between French regions. The bilateral intensity of networks is quantified using the financial structure and location of French firms and bilateral stocks of migrants. Compared to a situation without net...

In this paper we use a gravity model to study the trade performance of French and Spanish border regions relatively to non-border regions, over the past two decades. We find that, controlling for their size, proximity and location characteristics, border regions trade on average between 62% and 193% more with their neighbouring country than other r...

We develop a methodology to accurately compute transport costs. Based on the real transport network, our measure encompasses the characteristics of infrastructure, vehicle and energy used, as well as labor, insurance, tax and general charges borne by transport carriers. Computed for the 341 French employment areas, road transport shipments and the...

Following the model-based approach of Ellison and Glaeser (1997), we develop a framework to test for the link between concentration, spatial clustering and the size of plants. Concentration is an a-spatial concept of variability that can be measured with the standard locational Gini or the more sophisticated Ellison and Glaeser index. By contrast,...

This Paper develops a methodology to compute transport costs at low infra-country geographical levels. This simultaneously accounts for the real network infrastructure, a distance cost (fuel, repair, tolls), and a time opportunity cost (wages, insurance and general charges, vehicle use). When considering levels, geodesic distance, real distance, an...

McCallum (1995) shows in an influential contribution that, even when controlling for the impact of bilateral distance and region size, borders sharply reduce trade volumes between countries. We use in this paper data on bilateral trade flows between 94 French regions, for 10 industries and 2 years (1978 and 1993) to study the magnitude and variatio...

Using both standard and theory-grounded estimations of trade flow equations, this paper quantifies the role that business and social networks play in shaping trade between French regions. The bilateral (at the origin and destination of the flow) intensity of networks is investigated using the financial structure and location of French firms and bil...

[eng] We present a two-sided search model where agents differ by their human capital endowment and where workers of different skill are imperfect substitutes. Then the labor market endogenously divides into disjoint segments and wage inequality will depend on the degree of labor market segmentation. The most important results are : 1) overall wage...

TRANSPORT COSTS AND REGIONAL INEQUALITIES: A STRUCTURAL APPROACH This paper presents an economic geography model we use to investigate transport costs as a cause of regional inequalities. We perform a structural estimation of this model for 64 sectors simultaneously using a new dataset on generalized transport costs between the 341 French Employmen...

This paper presents an economic geography model we use to investigate transport costs as a cause of regional inequalities. We perform a structural estimation of this model for 64 sectors simultaneously using a new dataset on generalized transport costs between the 341 French Employment Areas. Transport costs, intermediate inputs and geography play...

[eng] Transport costs and regional inequalities: a structural approach This paper presents an economic geography model we use to investigate transport costs as a cause of regional inequalities. We perform a structural estimation of this model for 64 sectors simultaneously using a new dataset on generalized transport costs between the 341 French Emp...

This Paper first develops a tractable economic geography model we use to investigate the decline of transport costs as a cause of regional inequalities. Next, we perform a structural estimation of this model using a new dataset on road transport costs between the 341 French Employment Areas. We find that intermediate inputs and geographical feature...

Transportation costs and monopoly location in presence of regional disparities This article aims at analysing the impact of the level of transportation costs on the location choice of a monopolist. We consider two asymmetric regions. The heterogeneity of space lies in both regional incomes and population sizes: the first region is endowed with wide...

Ce chapitre est une revue de la littérature empirique concernant les effets des infrastructures, et plus particulièrement des infrastructures de transport, sur la croissance régionale et les choix de localisation. Dans une première section, les modèles de croissance avec infrastructures publiques et les validations empiriques qui en découlent sont...

This paper empirically investigates the predictions of economic geography models regarding the role of transport costs on regional inequalities. We perform a structural estimation of such a model on French data at detailed geographic and industry levels (341 "employment areas", 64 manufacturing and service industries). Transport costs, intermediate...