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on Economic Geography |
| By: | Collier, Paul; Venables, Anthony J |
| Abstract: | High productivity in cities creates an economic surplus relative to other areas. How is this divided between workers and land-owners? Simple models with homogenous labour suggest that it accrues largely - or entirely - in the form of land-rents. This paper shows that heterogeneity of labour in two main dimensions (productivity differentials and housing demands) radically changes this result. Even a modest amount of heterogeneity can drive the land share of surplus down to 2/3rds or lower, as high productivity and/or low housing demand individuals receive large utility gains. In a system of cities the sorting of workers across cities mean that the land-rent share of surplus is lowest in the largest and most productive cities. |
| Keywords: | cities; Land rent; productivity; sorting; wages |
| JEL: | R1 R10 R2 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12001&r=geo |
| By: | Forslid, Rikard; Okubo, Toshihiro |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes different development paths. Developing countries that limit the geographical movement of human capital (and firms) may end up in a different equilibrium path than countries that allow for geographical mobility. At early stages of development (when transportation costs are high), the model has an equilibrium where low-productivity firms concentrate in the large market with abundant human capital, whereas the most productive firms agglomerate to the smaller region with a relatively high endowment of labor. We relate this type of equilibrium to countries in an early stage of development, where industrial productivity in the periphery or small suburban cites can be higher than in the largest mega-cities. As economies develop and transportation costs fall, the model switches to an equilibrium where productive firms concentrate in the larger and human capital rich region. This corresponds to a modern equilibrium where highly productive firms concentrate in the largest and most human capital rich regions as is often seen in many developed countries. |
| Keywords: | agglomeration; Development; Heterogeneous Firms |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11977&r=geo |
| By: | de Graaff, Thomas (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Arribas-Bel, Daniel (University of Liverpool); Ozgen, Ceren (University of Birmingham) |
| Abstract: | Persistence of high youth unemployment and dismal labour market outcomes are imminent concerns for most European economies. The relationship between demographic ageing and employment outcomes is even more worrying once the relationship is scrutinized at the regional level. We focus on modelling regional heterogeneity. We argue that an average impact across regions is often not very useful, and that – conditional on the region's characteristics – impacts may differ significantly. We advocate the use of modelling varying level and slope effects, and specifically to cluster them by the use of latent class or finite mixture models (FMMs). Moreover, in order to fully exploit the output from the FMM, we adopt self-organizing maps to understand the composition of the resulting segmentation and as a way to depict the underlying regional similarities that would otherwise be missed if a standard approach was adopted. We apply our proposed method to a case-study of Germany where we show that the regional impact of young age cohorts on the labor market is indeed very heterogeneous across regions and our results are robust against potential endogeneity bias. |
| Keywords: | demographic aging, employment, finite mixture models, self-organizing maps, youth cohorts, immigrant workers |
| JEL: | J21 J61 J01 |
| Date: | 2017–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10734&r=geo |
| By: | João Romão (University of Algarve and CEFAGE, Portugal); Peter Nijkamp (Tinbergen Institute, the Netherlands) |
| Abstract: | Despite the increasing socio-economic importance of tourism, in particular in the European context, a set of recent studies involving a large number of European regions has led to the identification of important problems related to the sustainable use of natural resources, innovation dynamics and specialization patterns, impacts of tourism on regional economic growth, and the relations between tourism performance and regional sustainable development in Europe. Taking these questions as a starting point, the purpose of this review article is to propose a conceptual framework for their analysis, including concepts like authenticity, place, smart tourism, co-creation of destinations and experiences, information segmentation, differentiation of supply, life cycle of tourism destinations, path dependence, customer variety, specialization or integrative diversification of tourism products. Finally, this analytical framework is used in order to identify and discuss a set of challenges for the future of tourism in European regions, with a view to policy and managerial implications, oriented to the integration of tourism policies within a broader context of socio-economic development, with implications on the definition and implementation of innovation and regional development policies, including smart specialization strategies. These challenges relate to the touristic experience (memorable, personalized and authentic), innovation (in the context of a diverse economy) and participatory governance (communities sharing spaces and places). |
| Keywords: | Territorial capital; Innovation; Related variety; Sustainability; Regional development. |
| JEL: | Q56 R11 Z32 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfe:wpcefa:2017_01&r=geo |
| By: | M. Conceição Rego (Department of Economy, University of Évora and CEFAGE-UE); Conceição Freire (Department of Landscape, Environment and Planning, University of Évora and CHAIA UE); Isabel Ramos (Department of Landscape, Environment and Planning, University of Évora and CICS.NOVA.UÉvora); Andreia Dionísio (Department of Management, University of Évora and CEFAGE-UE); M. Saudade Baltazar (Department of Sociology, University of Évora and CICS.NOVA.UÉvora); M. Raquel Lucas (Department of Management, University of Évora and CEFAGE-UE) |
| Abstract: | Portugal is characterized by a significant asymmetry in the population distribution/density and economic activity as well as in social and cultural dynamics. This means very diverse landscapes, differences in regional development, sustainability and quality of life, mainly between urban and rural areas. A consequence coherent with the contemporary dynamics: urbanization of many rural areas that loose their productive-agricultural identity and, simultaneously, the reintegration in urban areas of spaces and activities with more rural characteristics. In this process of increasing complexity of organization of the landscape is essential to restore the continuum naturale (between urban and rural areas) allowing closer links to both ways of life. A strategy supported in the landscape, which plays important functions for public interest, in the cultural, social, ecological and environmental fields. At the same time, constitutes an important resource for economic activity, as underlined in the European Landscape Convention. |
| Keywords: | Urban; Rural; Quality of Life; Development; Portugal. |
| JEL: | R00 R11 I31 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfe:wpcefa:2017_04&r=geo |
| By: | Pierre-Alexandre Balland Author-X-Name-First: Pierre-Alexandre |
| Abstract: | The R statistical software is increasingly used to perform analysis on the spatial distribution of economic activities. It contains state-of-the-art statistical and graphical routines not yet available in other software such as SAS, Stata, or SPSS. R is also free and open-source. Many graduate students and researchers, however, find programming in R either too challenging or end up spending a lot of their precious time solving trivial programming tasks. This paper is a simple introduction on how to do economic geography in R using the EconGeo package (Balland, 2017). Users do not need extensive programming skills to use it. EconGeo allows to easily compute a series of indices commonly used in the fields of economic geography, economic complexity, and evolutionary economics to describe the location, distribution, spatial organization, structure, and complexity of economic activities. Functions include basic spatial indicators such as the location quotient, the Krugman specialization index, the Herfindahl or the Shannon entropy indices but also more advanced functions to compute different forms of normalized relatedness between economic activities or network-based measures of economic complexity. By opening and sharing the codes used to compute popular indicators of the spatial distribution of economic activities, one of the goals of this package is to make peer-reviewed empirical studies more reproducible by a large community of researchers. |
| JEL: | R |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1709&r=geo |