Why do cities differ so much in productivity? We document that most of the measured dispersion in productivity across US cities is spurious and reflects granularity bias: idiosyncratic heterogeneity in plant-level productivity and size, combined with finite plant counts. As a result, economies...

Analyzing hand-collected data on the corporate subsidiary locations of all publicly listed firms in China, we find that “hometown firms,” firms headquartered in the hometown of the key political leaders of the province, set up more subsidiaries in their home provinces. This effect is...

Using a sample of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), we show that institutional investors exploit location-based information asymmetries by overweighting firms headquartered locally and, more importantly, those with greater economic interests in the investor's home MSA. Moreover, this asset...

Manufacturing-heavy US regions recently saw lower employment and income growth. Exploiting data on tens of millions of housing transactions, we show that house prices grew by less in the same regions, a pattern exaggerated for the lowest-value homes. Counterfactual accounting exercises reveal...

"In a highly globalised trade and investment environment, businesses in regional areas must learn to take advantage of the benefits that stem from their geographical location. This book explains the immense value regional businesses bring to local communities and to Australia as a whole through...

City level differences in industry-adjusted Tobin's q, an estimate of the value created for shareholders, are large, and have widened sharply over the last twenty years. Proxies for a city's appeal to high-skill workers, such as existing education rates and favorable weather, are strongly...

The paper assesses the factors that influence the location of hotel groups' headquarters. The concentration of headquarters in a particular country is modelled by three different variables: share of Hotels 325 ranked hotel groups headquartered in the country, share of hotels in Hotels 325 ranked...

The location of individuals determines their job opportunities, living amenities, and housing costs. We argue that it is useful to conceptualize the location choice of individuals as a decision to invest in a 'location asset.' This asset has a cost equal to the location's rent, and a payoff...

The location of individuals determines their job opportunities, living amenities, and housing costs. We argue that it is useful to conceptualize the location choice of individuals as a decision to invest in a ‘location asset.' This asset has a cost equal to the location's rent, and a payoff...

This study estimates the location, composition, and investment implications of permanently reinvested earnings (PRE) reported in U.S. multinational corporations' (MNCs) consolidated financial statements. Our first set of analyses suggest that firms' PRE designations are motivated by both...

This book revisits the long contested negotiation between the Thatcher administration and Nissan for the latter's first green-field plant in Europe. From the very beginning, the plant took Britain's EC/EU membership and tariff-free access to the single market as a token. A considerable amount of...

Die Stiftung Familienunternehmen hat das ifo Institut im Jahr 2017 damit beauftragt, eine Analyse der Investitionstätigkeiten der deutschen Unternehmen vorzunehmen und eine umfassende Unternehmensdatenbank aufzubauen, die sich künftig zu einer in Deutschland führenden Datenquelle für die...

U.S. firms lease assets extensively. We find that, during 1980–2011, the average U.S. firm has a lease intensity of about 40%. Or, the average firm has present and future (up to five years) rent commitments equal to 16.6% of their total assets. We investigate whether agency costs between the...

This study examines the influence of a firm's geographical location on corporate debt and provides evidence that the higher cost of collecting information on firms distant from urban areas has significant implications on a wide array of corporate debt characteristics. We find that rural firms...

This paper makes a review of the main types of location, respectively of probability models, gravity models, utility models, location- allocation, but also of new spatial analysis instruments. In this context, we emphasize the fact that the new location models, based on a geographic information...

While the effects of non-geographic aggregation on inference are well studied in economics, research on geographic aggregation is rather scarce. This knowledge gap together with the use of aggregated spatial units in previous firm location studies result in a lack of understanding of firm...

The Hamburg banking sector experienced considerable structural changes in the period from 1850 until into the 1930s. Around 1856 and 1870, a large number of new banks were founded, mostly in the form of stock corporations. Starting in the 1890s, the banking center saw a consolidation with...

This paper uses a comprehensive, official firm-level dataset for German manufacturing firms to investigate the location decision of new firm activity in the German regional economy, differentiated by firm structure. The rich regional dimension of this dataset is investigated for the first time...

Borrowing a measure from ecology, we introduce a spatial dispersion index to quantify the firm traits related to firm geographic location and investigate firm exposure to local home bias and local investor risk tolerance as determinants of corporate market value. Consistent with the investor...

"It is of great importance to be able to determine who or what is considered 'resident' within the meaning of tax treaty provisions. However, the concept of residence has never been fundamentally adjusted to current circumstances in which technological developments make it possible for...