This paper reviews academic research on the connections between agglomeration and innovation. The authors first describe the conceptual distinctions between invention and innovation. They then discuss how these factors are frequently measured in the data and note some resulting empirical...

Theoretical models of endogenous growth identify capital accumulation and returns as a potential stimulus to economic growth. Existing empirical studies, however, are based on a limited notion of these returns, which follows from the simple production function framework used for estimation. The...

Hit hard by the financial crisis and recession, U.S. auto producers are seeking a massive bailout from the U.S. Congress. Many reasons are given for the U.S. auto industry's lack of competitiveness including the U.S. corporate income tax. Although it is regularly asserted that there is a direct...

The transistor was an American invention, and American firms led the world in semiconductor production and innovation for the first three decades of that industry's existence. In the 1980s, however, Japanese producers began to challenge American dominance. Shrill cries arose from the literature...

An increasingly influential "technological-discontinuity" paradigm suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant. This paper explores the evidence for this view among the IT-using U.S. manufacturing industries. There is some...

We build a model of firm entry and exit and show how returns to scale shape firm survival, the equilibrium productivity and size distributions and firm concentration. High productivity dispersion and high concentration ratios need not reflect inefficiencies when returns to scale are strongly...

Water can be a scarce resource, particularly in certain places at certain times. Understanding both water use and conservation efforts can help ensure that limited supplies can meet the demands of a growing population and economy. This paper examines water use and recirculation in the U.S....

Over the past twenty years, imports to the U.S. from low-wage countries have increased dramatically. In this paper we examine how low-wage country import competition in the U.S. influences the probability of manufacturing establishment closure. Confidential data from the U.S. Bureau of the...

A major challenge in research on agglomeration of economic activity is acquiring information on the location of production and service facilities. Here, we present a new way of locating U.S. manufacturing based on the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The...

We investigate whether the organizational design of manufacturing production is sensitive to important advances in information technology (IT) – and under what conditions. Using U.S. Census Bureau data for over 5,600 plants from 1992 to 2002, we observe both specific uses of IT and whether...