We examine the consequences of increased economic integration between nations within a region. We adopt Krugman’s economic-geography model in which demand linkages can generate agglomeration of manufacturing activity. Manufacturing labour is assumed to be imperfectly mobile between countries....

We return to a familiar topic in international trade, comparative advantage, introducing it into a model of economic geography. We provide a clear counterexample to the familiar result that trade liberalization leads to increased industrial concentration. Instead, lower trade costs may lead to a...

In models of economic geography, plant-level scale economies and trade costs create incentives for spatial agglomeration of production into a manufacturing core and agricultural periphery, creating regional income differentials. We examine tax competition between national governments to...

Clusters have already been extensively shown to favor firm-level economic performance (productivity, exports, innovation etc.). However, little is known about the capacity of firms in clusters to resist economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze whether firms that agglomerate in clusters and...

This paper examines empirical strategies that have been or could be used to evaluate the importance of agglomeration and trade models. This theoretical approach, widely known as ‘New Economic Geography’ (NEG), emphasizes the interaction between transport costs and firm-level scale economies...

This paper analyzes empirically the effect of spatial agglomeration of activities on the productivity of firms using French individual firm data from 1996 to 2004. This allows us to control for endogeneity biases that the estimation of agglomeration economies typically encounters. French firms...

Using data on name distributions in 95 French departments observed from 1946 to 2002, we investigate spatial and social mechanisms behind the transmission of parental preferences. Drawing inspiration from recent work on social interactions, we develop a simple discrete choice model that predicts...

This paper analyzes empirically a public policy promoting industrial clusters in France. Cluster policies have become popular in many countries but have not been extensively evaluated empirically. We use data on production and employment for firms that benefited from the policy and on firms that...

We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how market size and geography (the market sizes of and bilateral economic distances to trading partners) affect both a firm's exported product range and its exported product mix across market destinations (the distribution of...

This paper develops a method to measure difficulties in market access over a large set of industries and countries (both developing and developed), during the period 1980-2006. We use a micro-founded heterogeneous-consumers model to estimate the impact of national borders on global and regional...