In contrast to what several papers have argued recently, we show that firm heterogeneity fosters agglomeration of economic activity. If firms are more similar with respect to their total factor productivity, each company faces a lower propensity to export. This renders the home market more...

The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence of industry characteristics on the localization and urbanization agglomeration patterns of new firm location. To this end, we analyze the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Spain. First, for a 3-digit level, we identify for...

This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and...