When firms cluster in the same local labour market, they face a trade-off between the benefits of labour pooling (i.e., access to workers whose knowledge helps reduce costs) and the costs of labour poaching (i.e., loss of some key workers to competition and the indirect effect of a higher wage...

This Paper considers the spatial distribution of economic activities in the European Union. It has three main aims: (i) to describe the data that is available in the EU and give some idea of the rich spatial data sets that are fast becoming available at the national level; (ii) to present...

Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen competition allowing only the most productive to survive). To distinguish...

This study first summarises the forces that affect positively and negatively the spatial concentration of economic activity, and the bell curve that links general transaction costs to regional disparities. The specific role played by local labour markets is then detailed. While spatial...

We study the impact of local economic structure on employment dynamics. Local employment is decomposed into the product of the average plant size and the number of plants in the area and industry. We estimate the dynamics of both components simultaneously using French yearly data on 36...

Does productivity increase with density? We revisit the issue using French wage and TFP data.To deal with the ‘endogenous quantity of labour’ bias (i.e., urban agglomeration is consequenceof high local productivity rather than a cause), we take an instrumental variable approach andintroduce...

Firms are more productive on average in larger cities. Two explanations have been offered: agglomeration economies (larger cities promote interactions that increase productivity) and firm selection (larger cities toughen competition allowing only the most productive to survive). To distinguish...

This Paper studies the impact of local economic structure on local sectoral employment growth. Local employment growth is decomposed into ‘internal’ growth (the growth of the size of existing plants) and ‘external’ growth (the creation of new plants). Using panel data methods, we...