Taking the early U.S. automobile industry as an example, we evaluate two competing hypotheses on geographic concentration of industry: local externalities versus employee spinoffs. Our findings suggest that both forces contribute to industry agglomeration through their specific channels, and the...

This paper provides a theory of “family network”, in contrast to “local externalities”, to explain the geographic concentration of industry. For many industries, one most important source of entrants is spinoffs, who typically locate near parent firms and benefit from knowledge linkage...

Taking the early U.S. automobile industry as an example, we evaluate four competing hypotheses on regional industry agglomeration: intra-industry local externalities, inter-industry local externalities, employee spinouts, and location fixed-effects. Our findings suggest that inter-industry...

Taking the early U.S. automobile industry as an example, we evaluate four competing hypotheses on regional industry agglomeration: intra-industry local externalities, inter-industry local externalities, employee spinouts, and location fixed-effects. Our findings suggest that inter-industry...