the intrinsic value of gold an exchange rate free price index abstract in this paper we propose a gold price index that enables market participants to separate the change in the intrinsic value of gold from changes in global exchange rates the index is a geometrically weighted average of the price of gold denominated in different currencies with weights that are proportional to the market power of each country in the global gold market market power is defined as the impact that a change in a country s exchange rate has on the price of gold expressed in other currencies we use principal components analysis to reduce the set of global exchange rates to four currency blocs representing the u s dollar the euro the commodity currencies and the asian currencies respectively we estimate the weight of each currency bloc in the index in an error correction framework using a broad set of variables to control for the unobserved intrinsic value we show that the resulting index is less volatile than the usd price of gold and in contrast with the usd price of gold has a strong negative relationship with global equities and a strong positive relationship with the vix index both of which underline the role of gold as a safe haven asset

intra safe haven currency behavior during the global financial crisis abstract we investigate intra safe haven currency behavior during the recent global financial crisis we first assess which safe haven currency is the safest we then use non temporal threshold analysis to investigate whether intra safe haven currency behavior changes as market uncertainty increases we find that the jpy is the safest of safe haven currencies and that only the jpy appreciates as market uncertainty increases regardless of the prevailing level of uncertainty our results may have important implications for central banks optimizing their relative composition of international currency reserve holdings with respect to returns in usd terms and for foreign currency market investors in general

the effect of agglomeration economies on firm deaths a comparison of firm and regional based approaches this paper compares the merits of regional and firm based approaches for analysing the effect of agglomeration economies on firm deaths in ireland we aggregate a comprehensive data set on irish fi

tracking the slowdown in long run gdp growth using a dynamic factor model that allows for changes in both the long run growth rate of output and the volatility of business cycles we document a significant decline in long run output growth in the united states our evidence supports the view that most of this slowdown occurred prior to the great recession we show how to use the model to decompose changes in long run growth into its underlying drivers at low frequencies a decline in the growth rate of labor productivity appears to be behind the recent slowdown in gdp growth for both the united states and other advanced economies when applied to real time data the proposed model is capable of detecting shifts in long run growth in a timely and reliable manner

money velocity and the natural rate of interest abstract m1 velocity is approximately the permanent component of the short term rate this implies that agents in deciding how much wealth to allocate to non interest bearing m1 as opposed to interest bearing assets almost uniquely react to permanent shocks to the opportunity cost essentially ignoring transitory shocks this suggests that money demand models must be modified to allow for such distinct reaction to permanent and transitory variation in the opportunity cost of holding m1 under monetary regimes making inflation stationary permanent fluctuations in m1 velocity uniquely reflect to a close approximation permanent shifts in the natural rate of interest

regional innovation systems theory empirics and policy asheim b t lawton smith h and oughton c regional innovation systems theory empirics and policy regional studies interest in regional innovation systems has grown significantly over the past three decades driven partly by advances in theoretical analysis partly by the growing interest in innovation as a source of competitive advantage and partly by the need for new policies to address regional inequalities and divergence this article explores the elements and characteristics that exemplify the regional innovation systems approach it provides an appraisal and synthesis of the regional innovation systems paradigm and aims to shed light on a number of areas where theoretical empirical and policy based questions remain unanswered it outlines and assesses the major strands in recent theoretical and empirical debates and discusses how they might be developed to contribute to the further advancement of the regional innovation systems literature three interrelated questions form the key themes arou

market dynamics in the netherlands competition policy and the role of small firms a recent literature analyzing the dynamics of firms and industries suggests that the contribution of new and small firms to the dynamics of competition is significantly greater than found in a static analysis policy makers have responded by implementing a wide range of programs to reduce barriers to new firm startup at the same time a number of european countries have maintained systems of collective agreements imposing industry wide standards on the deployment and remuneration of inputs particularly labor the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the ability to deviate from the industry standards practiced by the incumbent firms promotes the viability of small and new firms we examine this using a longitudinal data base from the netherlands where a system of rigid industry wide collective agreements was abandoned in favor of greater flexibility whether or not the ability of small firms to deviate from the standards and practices of the incumbent firms in the industry promotes their viability in the dutch context is instructive to other european countries such as germany and france the latter countries have identified the startup of new firms as a central policy goal but have maintained systems of industry wide collective agreements the important finding emerging from this paper is that wage flexibility promotes the viability of small firms and thus can be considered to be an instrument of competition policy in a dynamic context

marshall s versus jacobs externalities in firm innovation performance the case of french industry galliano d magrini m b and triboulet p marshall s versus jacobs externalities in firm innovation performance the case of french industry regional studies this paper analyses the influence of different types of spatial externalities related to the location of firms on their innovation performance and how those externalities combine in the territories with regard to the marshall jacobs dichotomy the originality of this study also lies in the consideration of a larger definition of the firm one that takes into account the location of all its units based on a dataset of french industrial firms and specific indicators to evaluate the specialization and or diversification of the employment zones the impacts of the spatial profile of the firm on its innovation performance are tested

uncovering financial market expectations of inflation this paper seeks to uncover market expectations of inflation from the joint dynamics of nominal interest rates and observed inflation i postulate 1 the existence of a stable vector autoregression in unobserved variables and 2 efficient financial markets the estimation procedure requires no further structural assumptions the econometrician need not observe all the information used by agents in forming forecasts or all the variables that influence real interest rates i find no empirical evidence that economic recessions are correlated with inflation forecast errors however postwar recessions are associated with ex ante real interest rates that are twice the postwar average

technology agglomeration and regional competition for investment competition for firms by region has a long standing history and the academic literature has debated whether such competition is efficient we develop a model that explores technology development by firms facing regional competition for their invest ment and examine the endogenous determination of region policy firm technology and agglomeration externalities we find a new source of inefficiency regional competition leads firms to inefficiently distort their development and selection of production tech nology to improve their standing in the regional competition for their investment we show that these inefficient firm decisions on technology and location can also weaken agglomeration externalities jel classification h71 l2

geography industrial organization and agglomeration this paper makes two contributions to the empirical literature on agglomeration economies first the paper uses a unique and rich database in conjunction with mapping software to measure the geographic extent of agglomerative externalities previous papers have been forced to assume that agglomeration economies are club goods that operate at a metropolitan scale second the paper tests for the existence of organizational agglomeration economies of the kind studied qualitatively by saxenian 1994 this is a potentially important source of increasing returns that previous empirical work has not considered results indicate that localization economies attenuate rapidly and that industrial organization affects the benefits of agglomeration

a review of scott e page s the difference how the power of diversity creates better groups firms schools and societies this assessment of scott page s the difference princeton university press 2007 emphasizes the depth and breadth of the book s coverage and arguments and checks them against existing empirical evidence when available it argues that the book navigates artfully between being a manifesto for diversity and rigorous science writing while at the same time marketing economic science in new ways the review welcomes the book s popularization of richer aspects of everyday decision making individual and collective and its making an excellent case for the social significance of abstract economic theorizing especially about problem solving it praises the book s lively interpretations of statistical tools of decision making by means of enticing narratives the book s rhetoric urges us to move beyond accepting diversity as a matter of taste or even because of its beneficial effects on the production function and ultimately adopts its powerful logic it speculates that the book s true impact will likely come after thorough empirical research in empirical endeavors issues of definition especially of identity and of measurement and evaluation of policies that would enhance diversity would be decisive in democratic societies policies may pose new dilemmas as they benefit from public interest in overcoming the accumula tion of past disadvantages jel d23 z13

regime changes in international real interest rates are they a monetary phenomenon in this paper we use the bai and perron 1998 2001 2003 methodology to test for multiple structural breaks in the mean real interest rate for 13 industrialized countries we find extensive evidence of structural breaks in the mean real interest rate for all 13 countries in an attempt to explain the breaks in international real interest rates we also test for multiple structural breaks in the mean inflation rate for the 13 countries once again we find extensive evidence of structural breaks in the mean inflation rate for all of the countries interestingly the breaks in inflation rates and real interest rates often coincide with increases decreases in the mean inflation rate as we move from one regime to the next typically associated with decreases increases in the mean real interest rate

a comparison of the dynamics of industrial clustering in computing and biotechnology abstract this paper compares the dynamics of the process by which industrial clusters emerged in the us computing and biotechnology industries it examines whether new companies are attracted by industry strength in particular sectors or by the strength of the science base at particular locations in biotechnology it also compares the growth of incumbent firms in the two industries and asks whether growth is boosted by being within a cluster the paper finds that within computing there are some important cross sectoral effects on entry while in biotechnology these cross sectoral effects are more limited in biotechnology the science base plays an important role in promoting entry the growth of incumbent firms in both industries is promoted by strength in the company s own sector and cross sectoral effects and the role of the science base are negligible

the regional geography of corporate patenting in information and communications technology ict domestic and foreign dimensions in the new techno socio economic conditions characterized by an increasing reduction of temporal and spatial barriers and further globalization of economic activity paradoxically geography seems to matter more than ever before this particularly applies to science based industries e g information and communications technology ict where links between corporate competitors and firm university and user producer relationships are crucial in the development and adoption of new flexible technologies using us patents granted to the largest european electronic firms this paper looks at the interplay between the patenting by domestic and european foreign electronics companies of research and development carried out in ict fields in german uk and italian regions the findings suggest that patenting is attracted to existing areas of industrial strength taking a form of cumulative causation nonetheless policy measures may be successful in reversing the trend sous de nouvelles conditions techno et soc

the time varying effect of oil price shocks on euro area exports abstract in this paper we provide novel evidence on changes in the relationship between the real price of oil and real exports in the euro area by combining robust predictions on the sign of the impulse responses obtained from a theoretical model with restrictions on the slope of the oil demand and oil supply curves we identify oil supply and foreign productivity shocks in a time varying var with stochastic volatility we find that from the 1980s onwards the relationship between oil prices and euro area exports has become less negative conditional on oil supply shortfalls and more positive conditional on foreign productivity shocks using the theoretical model we show that our empirical findings can be accounted for by i stronger trade relationship between the euro area and emerging economies ii a decrease in the share of oil in production and iii increased competitive pressures in the product market

firm survival in traded industries does localization moderate the effects of founding team experience prior studies of the impact of founder team industry and start up experience on firm survival have paid little attention to location decisions or cluster effects in this paper we focus on young firms doing business in industries that compete for customers in geographically dispersed markets traded industries we examine whether regional concentrations localization of related industrial firms moderate the effects of founder team industry and start up experience on firm survival the study draws on firm level data from the kauffman firm survey and on county business patterns data from the us census bureau we found that localization negatively moderates the positive effects of founder team prior industry experience on firm survival we did not find significant moderating effects of localization on founder team prior start up experience our findings highlight the importance of accounting for location decisions and cluster effects when evaluating the human capital inputs of founder teams

estimating dynamic localization economies the inadvertent success of the specialization index and the location quotient estimating dynamic localization economies the inadvertent success of the specialization index and the location quotient regional studies after addressing definitional issues on the concepts of c

where does an industry locate abstract this paper presents an econometric model of industrial location and estimates the model for two industries in brazil based on a comprehensive data set the model predicts which cities will or will not have the industry and for these cities with the industry what the scale of operation will be the parameters estimated in a full information context represent the technology of production supply of entrepreneurs and equilibrating error in markets the results are strong and very suggestive and the explanatory power of the model is relatively high the results are used to simulate the impact of industry subsidies on locational patterns

on the economic foundation of the urban network paradigm spatial integration functional integration and economic complementarities within the dutch randstad conceptually the degrees of spatial and functional integration and urban complementarities in economic network relations are hypothesised to be important in this paper data on interfirm relations in the dutch randstad are used to test conditions for integration and the existence of economic complementarities a clear hierarchy is observed in the different types of spatial interdependencies in the randstad in which the central place model prevails furthermore no evidence is found for the functional integration of municipalities in the randstad it is concluded that at this moment the randstad does not function as a spatially and functionally integrated region and that spatial economic policy can better focus on smaller regions within the randstad this also calls into question the applicability of the urban network concept in general as the dutch randstad is usually seen as a prime example of an economically successful polycentric urban system

industry specific firm growth and agglomeration duschl m scholl t brenner t luxen d and raschke f industry specific firm growth and agglomeration regional studies this paper analyses the industry specific relationship between industrial clustering and firm growth micro geographically defined agglomeration measures based on travel time distances and a flexible log logistic decay function framework are used to study the spatial impacts of related economic and knowledge generating activities in 23 industries it is found that firms growth prospects tend to be generally hampered by the agglomeration of own industry employment whereas the impact of proximate scientific activities systematically depends on the kind and age of industry furthermore the optimal specifications of decay function that measures agglomeration effects considerably vary between both the industrsssies and the variables

do tfp and the relative price of investment share a common i 1 component abstract results from cointegration tests clearly suggest that tfp and the relative price of investment rpi are not cointegrated evidence on the alternative possibility that they may nonetheless contain a common i 1 component generating long horizon co variation between them crucially depends on the fact that i structural breaks are or are not allowed for and ii the precise nature and timing of such breaks not allowing for breaks evidence points towards the presence of a common component inducing positive long horizon covariation which is compatible with the notion that the technology transforming consumption goods into investment goods is non linear and the rpi is also impacted upon by neutral shocks allowing for breaks evidence suggests that long horizon covariation is either nil or negative assuming for illustrative purposes that the two series contain a common component inducing negative long horizon covariation evidence based on structural vars shows that this common shock i plays an important role in macroeconomic fluctuations explaining sizeable fractions of the forecast error variance of main macro series and ii generates disinflationary booms characterized by transitory increases in hours and decreases in inflation

industry diversity competition and firm relatedness the impact on employment before and after the 2008 global financial crisis industry diversity competition and firm relatedness the impact on employment before and after the 2008 global financial crisis regional studies this study investigates the extent to which indicators of external scale economies impacted employment growth in canada over the period 2004 11 it focuses on knowledge spillovers between firms while accounting for marshallian specialization jacobs diversity and competition by industry as well as related and unrelated firm varieties in terms of employment and sales it is found that the employment growth effects of local competition and diversity are positive while the effect of marshallian specialization is negative diversification is found to be particularly important for employment growth during the global financial crisis and immediately thereafter

drift and breaks in labor productivity abstract we use endogenous break tests and the stock watson tvp mub methodology to investigate changes in the equilibrium rate of growth of labor productivity in the u s the eurozone the u k australia and japan since wwii results for the u s well capture the conventional wisdom of a golden era of high productivity growth the 1950s and 1960s a marked deceleration starting from the beginning of the 1970s and a strong growth resurgence starting from mid 1990s results for the eurozone point towards a deceleration since the early 1980s with the equilibrium rate of growth of output per hour falling to 0 9 in 2004 4

firm heterogeneity and location choices evidence from foreign manufacturing investments in china this paper develops a model which indicates that foreign firms location choices are determined jointly by site attributes and firm heterogeneity the model is estimated using data on 2565 foreign manufacturing investments in china the conditional logit estimates and simulation results provide supportive evidence an increase in a firm s labour intensity magnifies the impact of labour cost while a location s local communications infrastructure has a stronger influence on foreign firms that have adopted modern information technology it is also found that agglomeration effects decrease with firm size and labour quality implications for researchers and policy makers are discussed in the conclusion

macroeconomic implications of agglomeration cities exist because of the productivity gains that arise from clustering production and workers a process called agglomeration how important is agglomeration for aggregate growth this paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of cities and uses it to estimate the effect of local agglomeration on aggregate growth we combine aggregate time series and city level panel data to estimate the model s parameters via generalized method of moments the estimates imply a statistically and economically significant impact of local agglomeration on the growth rate of per capita consumption raising it by about 10

technological clusters with a knowledge based principle evidence from a delphi investigation in the french case of the life sciences abstract recent works in the theory of technical change show the effect of irreversibility and lock in on the diffusion and creation of innovation processes which are able to stop the development of a generic technology therefore industrial policies play a major role in selecting and supporting the innovative process the purpose of this paper is to prove the possibility to derive a typology of future innovations in terms of generic technology from a delphi type technology survey thus it is possible to get a better understanding of the industrial dynamics and to design an interesting tool for industrial policies or for firm strategies as far as they aim at developing stable technological trajectories this is applied to the french case of the life sciences the paper suggests interesting explanatory trajectories in order to fight against diseases such as cancer alzheimer or schizophrenia

investigating inflation persistence across monetary regimes under inflation targeting estimates of the indexation parameter in hybrid new keynesian phillips curves are either equal to zero or very low in the united kingdom canada sweden and new zealand analogous results hold for the euro area under the european monetary union and for switzerland under the new monetary regime under stable regimes with clearly defined nominal anchors inflation appears to be purely forward looking these results question the notion that the intrinsic inflation persistence found in post wwii u s data is structural in the sense of lucas carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 1 1976 19 46 and suggest that hardwiring inflation persistence in macroeconomic models is potentially misleading

cross border relocations of headquarters in europe this paper analyzes the relocations of both corporate and regional headquarters hq in a multi country setting on the basis of a dataset of 52 cross border hq relocations in europe during 1996 2006 we document an increasing trend toward relocation push and pull factors affecting hq location choice and catalyzing factors that affect the relocation decision high taxes and a high employment rate represent push factors that we find to increase the likelihood of hq relocation in particular at the mean rate of corporate tax a one percentage point increase in tax translates into a 6 8 increase in hq relocation likelihood in contrast central location and low taxes represent pull factors that increase the attractiveness of the hq location in terms of catalyzing factors we find that export oriented companies and regional hq have a higher tendency to relocate as a whole we extend the existing research by putting forward a conceptual framework of hq relocation decisions and by providing novel empirical evidence on the hq relocation phenomenon our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the determinants of corporate hq relocation decisions and provide important tax policy considerations for public policy decision makers in individual european countries and in the european commission

the quest for prosperity without inflation abstract in recent years activist monetary policy rules responding to inflation and the level of economic activity have been advanced as a means of achieving effective output stabilization without inflation advocates of such policies suggest that their flexibility may yield substantial stabilization benefits while avoiding the excesses of overzealous discretionary fine tuning such as is thought to characterize the experience of the 1960s and 1970s in this study i present evidence suggesting that these conclusions are misguided using an estimated model i show that when informational limitations are properly accounted for activist policies would not have averted the great inflation but instead would have resulted in worse macroeconomic performance than the actual historical experience the problem can be attributed in large part to the counterproductive reliance of these policies on the output gap the analysis suggests that the dismal economic outcomes of the great inflation may have resulted from an unfortunate pursuit of activist policies in the face of bad measurement specifically overoptimistic assessments of the output gap associated with the productivity slowdown of the late 1960s and early 1970s

how store format choices and market structure affect agglomeration economies and competition among chain stores in the us supermarket industry this article studies how store format choices and market concentration affect agglomeration economies and competition among chain stores using data on supermarket chains in arizona georgia and il

the new econometrics of structural change dating breaks in u s labor productivity we have seen the emergence of three major innovations in the econometrics of structural change in the past fifteen years 1 tests for a structural break of unknown timing 2 estimation of the timing of a structural break and 3 tests to distinguish unit roots from broken time trends these three innovations have dramatically altered the face of applied time series econometrics in this paper we review these three innovations and illustrate their application through an empirical assessment of u s labor productivity in the manufacturing durables sector

price reactions to rivals local channel exits in this paper we study the effect of a firm s local channel exits on prices charged by incumbents remaining in the marketplace exits could result in higher prices due to tempered competition or lower prices due to reduced colocation or agglomeration benefits the net effect of these two countervailing forces remains unknown in addition little is known about how this effect could change depending on incumbents geographic locations we address this research gap by examining new car price reactions by incumbent multiproduct automobile dealerships who experience the exit of a chrysler dealership in their local markets we find evidence that the competition effect exceeds the colocation effect prices increase by about 1 318 following an exit relative to the price change in the absence of an exit more important we find that the price increase is lower at dealerships more proximate to the exiting dealership than dealerships farther away for the same set of cars available across these locations this

financial and fiscal interaction in the euro area crisis this time was different abstract this paper highlights the anomalous characteristics of the euro area twin crises by contrasting the aggregate macroecosnomic dynamics in the period 2009 2013 with the business cycle fluctuations of the previous decades we report three novel stylised facts first the contraction in output was marked by an anomalous downfall in private investment and an increase in households savings while consumption and unemployment followed their historical relation with gdp second households and financial corporations debts and house prices deviated from their pre crisis trends while non financial corporations debt followed historical regularities third the jumps in the public deficit gdp and debt gdp ratios in 2008 2009 were unprecedented and so was the fiscal consolidation that followed our analysis points to the financial nature of the crisis as a likely explanation for these facts importantly the anomalous increase in public debt is in large part explained by extraordinary measures in support of the financial sector which show up in the stock flow adjustments and reveal a keyinteraction between the fiscal and the financial sectors

the spillover effects of united states foreign trade zones abstractthis article empirically tests the geographic and economic spillover effects of foreign trade zones ftzs in the united states by utilizing propensity score matching and the geographic rules of the programme while these ftz sites are designed to support manufacturing we find that zip codes that receive ftz sites experience growth in new and existing non manufacturing establishments our results also show that ftzs spillover into nearby zip codes we find that zip codes that border ftz zip codes also experience positive effects on non manufacturing establishments and these spillovers are strongest within a 5 mile radius of an ftz

congestion agglomeration and the structure of cities abstract congestion costs in urban areas are significant and clearly represent a negative externality nonetheless economists also recognize the production advantages of urban density in the form of positive agglomeration externalities the long run equilibrium outcomes in economies with multiple correlated but offsetting externalities have yet to be fully explored in the literature therefore i develop a spatial equilibrium model of urban structure that includes both congestion costs and agglomeration externalities i then estimate the structural parameters of the model using a computational algorithm to match the spatial distribution of employment population land use land rents and commute times in the data policy simulations based on the estimates suggest that congestion pricing may have ambiguous consequences for economic welfare

technology agglomeration and regional competition for investment technology agglomeration the active courting of firms by municipalities regions and even nations has a long standing history and the competition for firm location through a wide variety of incentives seems to have escalated to new heights in recent years we develop a model that explores technology development by firms that face regional competition for their investment and examine the endogenous determination of regions policies firm technology and agglomeration externalities in particular we find that regional competition leads firms to inefficiently distort their research and development efforts in hopes of improving their standing in the competition amongst regions for their investment this loss in efficiency is aggravated by the agglomeration externalities that are inherently present in many industries we offer several case studies that provide evidence consistent with our theoretical conclusions

productivity and city size a critique of the evidence a critique of two leading articles in the productivity and city size literature results in revised estimates of the productivity advantages of large cities in particular extant estimates of the elasticity of productivity with city size are revised downward by over 100 percent for the manufacturing sector and about 25 percent for the entire urban economy after revision productivity advantages of larger cities are found to be much larger for the nonmanufacturing sector than for the manufacturing sector hence revitalization policies for large cities should be focused on nonmanufacturing sectors

technological specialization and variety in urban invention o huallachain b and lee d s technological specialization and variety in urban invention regional studies urban economic theory distinguishes between knowledge spillovers that occur within specializations and those that cross technologies empirical analysis has sought to gauge their relative strength but the results are inconclusive metropolitan specialization and variety at different aggregation levels of a us patent classification system are assessed using theil s relative entropy index the results show that specialization and variety are not competing features of urban technological structure cities can have both the invention rate positively associates with specialization in diverse technologies the cross fertilization of ideas among skilled professionals with different expertise and the interaction between specialists of narrow fields of knowledge are both important in technological advance the most inventive cities have deep specializations in different technologies the results also sho

entry growth and survival in the green industry abstractentry growth and survival in the green industry regional studies economists are interested in the factors that induce firm entry lead to growth and help firms succeed in various markets such information can be helpful to policy makers but unfortunately such patterns have not been considered for green industries this paper takes advantage of a recent definition of green industries proposed by the us bureau of labor statistics bls to investigate patterns characterizing these industries within the state of texas

product market competition and the financing of new ventures this paper examines the interaction between venture risk product market competition and the entrepreneur s choice between bank financing and venture capital vc financing under bank financing a debt type contract emerges as optimal which allows the entrepreneur to retain full control of the venture and thus yields strong effort incentives as long as the entrepreneur can service the debt repayment however this leads to liquidation in the case of default making the venture s success quite sensitive to exogenous even temporary shocks that may hinder debt repayment under vc financing an equity type contract emerges as optimal although it is not sensitive to exogenous shocks this contract requires the entrepreneur to share a fraction of the rents with the financier thus yielding lower effort incentives for the entrepreneur there exists a threshold level of venture risk such that bank financing is optimal if and only if venture risk is below that threshold product market competition increases the value of stronger entrepreneurial incentives and thus increases the maximum level of risk the entrepreneur is willing to take before switching from bank financing to vc financing this is a robust result that is shown to hold in various models of competition including the hotelling salop dixit stiglitz and cournot to bertrand switch this paper was accepted by lee fleming entrepreneurship and innovation

taxes and agglomeration economies how are they related to nonprofit firm location author affiliation teresa d harrison department of economics drexel university 3141 chestnut street philadelphia pa 19104 usa tharrison drexel edu1 introductionnonprofits are an ever increasing component of the u s economy from 1997 2001 employment growth in the nonprofit sector averaged 2 5 outpacing both the business 1 8 and the government sectors 1 6 moore 2004 much of this growth stems from new nonprofits yet few studies have investigated possible determinants of nonprofit entry and location decisions most of these studies focus on demand side factors wolch and geiger 1983 downes and greenstein 1996 bielefeld murdoch and waddell 1997 for example downes and greenstein 1996 focus on demographic and religious characteristics of the surrounding community and its relation to private school location in this paper i use firm level data and focus on potentially important supply side variables tax rates and agglomeration economies most nonprofits are exempt from corporate sales and property taxes hansmann 1987 and gulley and santerre 1993 find evidence that higher corporate property and sales taxes are positively related to nonprofit market share however market share measures obfuscate the dynamics of the industry in terms of entry and exit rates if market share for nonprofits increases in response to higher tax rates this could be because new nonprofits are entering or because for profits are leaving the industry identifying these two cases is impossible with market share data using nonprofit tax return data i examine the relation between these tax exemptions and state county location decisions of new nonprofits to my knowledge this is the first paper to study these interactions at the individual firm level nonprofits also receive tax favored status due to the individual tax deduction on charitable contributions gentry and penrod 1998 employees of and donors to the nonprofits will be affected by the individual tax rates this in turn alters the costs to the nonprofit of location in a high or low tax area unlike previous studies i therefore investigate the relation between individual marginal tax rates and nonprofit location another potential supply side determinant of firm location decisions is the existing firm concentration in the area the potential economies of scale generated by proximity to other firms have been extensively examined in for profit industries 1 previous studies have generally found a positive relation between agglomeration and location carlton 1983 bartik 1985 woodward 1992 gius and frese 2002 rosenthal and strange 2003 to my knowledge bielefeld et al 2004 is the only study that examines nonprofit agglomeration finding evidence of agglomeration in dallas texas this warrants additional examination because nonprofit output is generally service driven and less mobile thus agglomeration implies greater direct competition making market saturation a larger issue in the nonprofit market using a nationwide dataset i examine how location and existing firm concentration are related and explore the potential presence of market saturation i also investigate possible differences between inter and intra industry agglomeration my results provide new insight into nonprofit firm behavior in most cases higher tax rates are associated with new firm location but the results for corporate and property taxes vary across the sample years i find that individual tax rates are an important consideration for nonprofits and are positively correlated to location my analysis also contributes to the literature by examining how the sensitivity to tax rates varies according to the sources of revenues for the institution firms that depend highly on individual donations are more likely to locate in high individual tax states while nonprofits with large mission related revenues are more sensitive to the property tax rate

do inter city differences in intra city wage differentials have any interesting implications abstract recent research has related characteristics of cities to differences in the distribution of wages across workers with different skill levels we demonstrate that these differences in wage differentials arise naturally as a compensating variation in rosen s theoretical model of inter city wages for example if the income elasticity of demand for housing services is less than unity cities with higher house prices will have smaller money wage differentials between low and high skill workers this result has no implications for differences in either absolute or relative real productivity or welfare of unskilled workers similarly changes in the amenity of an urban area may result in changes in relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers with no implications for real productivity or welfare differentials empirical tests in which housing cost differentials are added as a determinant of inter city differences in an intra urban wage differential model provide empirical confirmation of the theoretical expectations it appears that intra urban money wage differentials differences in the quality of life and variation in the cost of living in each city are jointly determined variables just as rosen s model of inter city wage differentials predicts

industrial clusters knowledge integration and performance abstract scholars examining the phenomenon of industrial clusters have begun to regard them as social communities specializing in efficient knowledge creation and transfer in addition to neo classical arguments focusing on the advantages of localization we seek to contribute to this body of work by developing the argument that both the degree of knowledge integration between an industrial cluster s agents and the scope of their economic activities are key dimensions behind their economic performance we present a model that incorporates a hypothesized relationship between these three dimensions and argue that a formal test of this hypothesis constitutes a promising area of future empirical research in this field

technology utilization and inflation what drives the new keynesian phillips curve we argue that the new keynesian phillips curve literature has failed to deliver a convincing measure of real marginal costs we start from a careful modeling of optimal price setting allowing for nonunitary factor substitution nonneutral technical change and time varying factor utilization rates this ensures the resulting real marginal cost measures match volatility reductions and level changes witnessed in many u s time series the cost measure comprises conventional countercyclical cost elements plus procyclical and covarying utilization rates although procyclical elements seem to dominate the components of real marginal cost components are becoming less cyclical over time incorporating this richer driving variable produces more plausible price stickiness estimates than otherwise and suggests a more balanced weight of backward and forward looking inflation expectations than commonly found our results challenge existing views of inflation determinants and have important implications for modeling inflation in new keynesian models

the attenuation of human capital spillovers abstract this paper uses 2000 census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages the paper takes a geographic approach and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wage agglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables three key results are obtained first the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage second the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers an instance of human capital spillovers third these effects attenuate sharply with distance

no place like home relocation capabilities and firm survival in the german machine tool industry after world war ii we explore the extent to which organizational capabilities are location specific by studying the location choices and longevity of east german machine tool producers that relocated to west germany after world war ii relocating firms were similar in performance to experienced west german incumbents they outperformed new entrants without prewar industry experience this suggests they were able to build on capabilities acquired before the war even though relocating firms tended lo locate in industry agglomerations and in urbanized regions we find no evidence suggesting that firm performance benefited from agglomeration economies copyright 2011 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

gold and the dollar and the euro pound and yen abstract usually gold and the dollar are negatively related when the dollar price of gold increases the dollar depreciates against other currencies this is intuitively puzzling because it seems to suggest that gold prices are associated with appreciation in other currencies why should the dollar be different we show here that there is actually no puzzle the price of gold can be associated with currency depreciation in every country the dollar price of gold can be related to dollar depreciation and the euro pound yen price of gold can be related to euro pound yen depreciation indeed this is usually the case empirically

post the washington consensus economic governance and industrial strategies for the twenty first century recent events in the global economy have led to a growing dissatisfaction with the neo liberal economic paradigm that has dominated economic policy over the last 30 years and the increasing concentration of and abuse of economic power within the corporate sector that has ensued however amidst calls for a new approach to economic management there is a danger that a new policy framework may overlook underlying economic governance structures that exist and may evolve within the economy such oversight has implications for development this paper seeks to demonstrate that the long run efficacy of industrial strategy depends upon designing appropriate economic governance structures that serve the wider public interest it does so by exploring past experiences of industrial strategy drawing lessons from the usa the uk japan the third italy and the emerging and transition economies we also offer some suggestions for ways forward

international evidence on time variation in trend labor productivity growth this paper provides international evidence on time variation in trend productivity growth based on the dataset for hours worked constructed by ohanian raffo 2012 applying both the endogenous break tests of bai perron 1998 2003 and the stock watson 1996 1998 tvp mub methodology substantial evidence of time variation in trend productivity growth is detected for most countries for either japan or countries belonging to the eurozone evidence points towards a significant growth decline over the last several decades weaker evidence is reported for the united states for which the 1990 s productivity acceleration is estimated to have been overall mild and of a temporary nature

the effects of adaptation measures on hurricane induced property losses which fema investments have the highest returns abstract this paper evaluates the relative effectiveness of fema expenditures on hurricane induced property losses we find that spending on fema ex ante mitigation and planning projects leads to greater reductions in property losses than spending on ex post adaptation programs specifically a one percent increase in annual spending on ex ante risk reduction and warning projects reduces damages by 0 21 percent while a one percent increase in ex post recovery and clean up spending reduces damages by 0 12 although both types of program spending are effective we find the marginal return from spending on programs that target long term mitigation and risk management to be almost twice that of spending on ex post recovery programs with the predicted increases in the frequency and severity of north atlantic hurricanes in the future our findings suggest there are important potential gains that could be realized from the further diversification of fema spending across project categories

marshall s scale economies and jacobs externality in korea the role of age size and the legal form of organisation of establishments this paper revisits the concept of agglomeration economies by estimating the effects of localisation urbanisation and local competition on labour productivity using establish ment level data in korean manufacturing industries it is found that when an establish ment locates in a more localised specialised more urbanised diversified and more competitive area its workers become more productive due to external benefits from agglomeration issues of self selection bias and omitted variable bias are addressed by instrumenting the variables measuring localisation economies and controlling for the fixed effects of establishments location and industries year however the external effects from the spatial proximity of other establishments vary across the categories of industry type age size and legal form of organisation of establishments establishments in traditional heavy manufacturing industries receive more external benefits in a less diversified area while those in transport equipment manufacturing industries enjoy the largest benefits from localisation externalities exist for establishments aged between 2 and 7 years having at least 10 workers being corporate and having multiplants or not being headquarters establishments in relatively young industries rely more on diver sified environments while establishments in relatively old industries receive greater external benefits in the same industry cluster this result supports the product life cycle location theory of duranton and puga

quality of the business environment versus quality of life do firms and households like the same cities this paper develops a new measure of the quality of business environment that complements existing measures of the quality of life an annual panel of these measures is constructed and analyzed for 37 cities from 1977 to 1995 findings indicate that many cities attractive to firms are unattractive to households and vice versa in addition the size of a city s workforce increases with improvements in the quality of the business environment in contrast cities most likely to be dominated by retirees are those that are less attractive to firms additional specifications support theoretical arguments that retirees are drawn to cities in which local attributes are capitalized into lower wages rather than higher rents

which agglomeration externalities matter most and why this paper revisits the ongoing discussion on the importance of agglomeration externalities specifically specialization diversity and competition effects that may contribute to innovation productivity and urban employment growth previous meta analyses suggested that the evidence on agglomeration externalities is strongly context specific expanding an earlier analysis of 31 articles we seek to draw in this paper more robust conclusions by means of the statistical evidence for agglomeration externalities presented in 73 scientific articles all building on the seminal work of glaeser et al 1992 our results confirm that the heterogeneity among studies is huge and can only be partially accounted for by means of an ordered probit analysis additionally some evidence of publication bias is found we conclude that the conventional lines of inquiry in this literature may now have reached strongly diminishing returns new lines of inquiry using rich micro level data on firms and workers dynamic general equilibrium models at the macro level more attention for spatial and temporal variation in the impacts of agglomeration and further investigations into the spatial scope of externalities are promising avenues for further research that can enhance our understanding of how agglomeration externalities continue to fuel our increasingly urbanized world

tax differentials in intraregional firm location evidence from new manufacturing establishments in spanish municipalities jofre monseny j and sole olle a tax differentials in intraregional firm location evidence from new manufacturing establishments in spanish municipalities regional studies this paper analyses empirically how differences in local taxes affect the intraregional location of new manufacturing plants these effects are examined within the random profit maximization framework it looks at the location decision of more than 10 000 manufacturing establishments locating between 1996 and 2003 across more than 400 municipalities in catalonia a spanish region it is found that local taxes on business and property deter new manufacturing establishments it is necessary to restrict the choice set to the local labour market and above all to control for agglomeration economies to identify the effects of taxes on the location of new establishments jofre monseny j et sole olle a les ecarts dans les taux d imposition et la localisation intra regionale des entreprises des preuves provenant des nouveaux etablisseme

investigating time variation in the marginal predictive power of the yield spread abstract we use bayesian time varying parameters vars with stochastic volatility to investigate changes in the marginal predictive content of the yield spread for output growth in the united states and the united kingdom since the gold standard era and in the eurozone canada and australia over the post wwii period overall our evidence does not provide much support for either of the two dominant explanations why the yield spread may contain predictive power for output growth the monetary policy based one and harvey s 1988 the real term structure and output growth journal of financial economics 22 305 333 real yield curve one instead we offer a new conjecture

financial structure and the growing small firm theoretical underpinning and current evidence this paper introduces a special issue of small business economics on financing and small firm dynamics it establishes a general underpinning for the analysis of small firm financing over time this appeals to the control theoretic literature and permits the specification of master trajectories of key variables over time like output debt dividend and capital two trajectories for cheap debt and cheap equity respectively illustrate this type of analysis showing how financial structure can vary over time involving phases of growth consolidation and stationarity from this perspective six papers on small firm dynamics and finance are reviewed issues addressed include credit constraints funding shortages wealth as collateral financial structure target income modelling of start up and bank lending during financial liberalisation

growth beyond gibrat firm growth processes and strategies firm growth studies have been focused on the question of whether firm growth is independent of firm size this shadow of gibrat s law has drawn attention to the randomness in firm growth however it has also clouded relevant research avenues that enquire into the role of firm growth processes and strategies this paper takes stock of the current state of the art of firm growth studies in small business economics and makes a plea for more specific research approaches that highlight the nature of the firm organization and growth paths this rejuvenation of firm growth studies comprises a search for necessary mechanisms and contingent conditions for the growth of firms

the economic performance of cities a markov switching approach abstract this paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas to obtain growth rates we use a markov switching model that separates a city s growth path into two distinct phases high and low each with its own growth rate the simple average growth rate over some period is therefore the weighted average of the high phase and low phase growth rates with the weight being the frequency of the two phases we estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high phase and low phase growth rates growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only specifically the relative importance of manufacturing overall our results strongly reject the notion that city level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle

agglomeration economies in urban manufacturing industries a case of japanese cities abstract the effects of urban agglomeration economies on productivities in two digit manufacturing industries is estimated using the cross section data of japanese cities in 1979 urbanization and localization economies which are major forms of urban agglomeration economies are explicitly separated the estimates of these economies vary considerably among industries light industries receive more productive advantages from urbanization economies than from localization economies but heavy industries experience these economies more from localization economies than from urbanization economies

network structure and the diffusion of knowledge this paper models knowledge diffusion as a barter process in which agents exchange different types of knowledge this is intended to capture the observed practice of informal knowledge trading agents are located on a network and are directly connected with a small number of other agents agents repeatedly meet those with whom direct connections exist and trade if mutually profitable trades exist in this way knowledge diffuses throughout the economy we examine the relationship between network architecture and diffusion performance we consider the space of structures that fall between at one extreme a network in which every agent is connected to n nearest neighbours and at the other extreme a network with each agent being connected to on average n randomly chosen agents we find that the performance of the system exhibits clear small world properties in that the steady state level of average knowledge is maximal when the structure is a small world that is when most connections are local but roughly 10 percent of them are long distance the variance of knowledge levels among agents is maximal in the small world region whereas the coefficient of variation is minimal we explain these results as reflecting the dynamics of knowledge transmission as affected by the architecture of connections among agents

multilevel approaches and the firm agglomeration ambiguity in economic growth studies empirical studies in spatial economics have shown that agglomeration economies may be a source of the uneven distribution of economic activities and economic growth across cities and regions both localization and urbanization economies are hypothesized to foster agglomeration and growth but recent meta analyses of this burgeoning body of empirical research show that the results are ambiguous recent overviews show that this ambiguity is fuelled by measurement issues and heterogeneity in terms of scale of time and space aggregation growth definitions and the functional form of the models applied alternatively in this paper we argue that ambiguity may be due to a lack of research on firm level performance in agglomerations this research is necessary because the theories that underlie agglomeration economies are microeconomic in nature hierarchical or multilevel modeling which allows micro levels and macro levels to be modeled simultaneously is becoming an increasingly common practice in the social sciences as illustrated by detailed dutch data on firm level productivity employment growth and firm survival we argue that these approaches are also suitable for reducing the ambiguity surrounding the agglomeration firm performance relationship and for addressing spatial sectoral and cross level heterogeneity

industrial districts district effect and firm size the italian evidence the paper analyses the transformations that occurred in the italian industrial districts ids by empirically estimating the role of the district effect on firm performance over recent decades given their ability to manage upper level and size related business practices medium sized firms emerge as local players best able to exploit their embeddedness in the districtual system and leverage districtual assets however these effects are only present in firms belonging to the industrial specialization of the district an additional result of the empirical analysis shows that the leading role of medium sized firms is critical in younger districts where medium sized firms lead the renewal of the id and its adaptation to the changes of the competitive environment as most italian ids are specialized in traditional sectors this evidence contributes to understanding the mechanisms connecting the competitiveness of the traditional industry and its localised organizational structure the paper also provides a discussion of the future of ids including the relevance of the evolutionary stage of the district on the performance of affiliated firms and their reproducibility over time

an ecological analysis of competition among us communities we apply the ecological concept of the organization s niche pioneered by john freeman and mike hannan to the study of geographic communities we define a community s market niche by the ties linking a community to the industries on which it depends for growth we then hypothesize that the extent to which a community s market niche is occupied by other communities is a source of constraint and opportunity depending on the geographical locations of the communities that occupy the same market niche geographically distant communities occupying similar market niches are hypothesized to experience primarily constraint arising from competition for opportunities of exchange geographically proximate communities occupying similar market niches are hypothesized to face constraint arising from competition for exchange opportunities as well as opportunity arising from access to valuable resources associated with the existence of similar others empirical analyses of firm foundings and exits across us communities support these hypotheses implications of our findings for ecological research on the niche and for the literature on communities are discussed copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

venture capital entrepreneurship and economic growth abstract using a panel of u s metropolitan areas we find that increases in the supply of venture capital positively affect firm starts employment and aggregate income our results remain robust to a variety of specifications including ones that address endogeneity the estimated magnitudes imply that venture capital stimulates the creation of more firms than it funds which appears consistent with two mechanisms first would be entrepreneurs anticipating financing needs more likely start firms when the supply of capital expands second funded companies may transfer know how to their employees thereby enabling spin offs and may encourage others to become entrepreneurs through demonstration effects

technological trajectories as moderators of firm level determinants of innovation pavitt research policy 13 1984 343 identified different patterns of technological change technological trajectories in four sectoral classes of industrial firms this paper tests the applicability of pavitt s taxonomy which derived from an economic perspective to moderate the inconsistent results of the management literature on the determinants of technological innovation an empirical test in a sample of 105 greek companies showed that firms in different trajectories of pavitt s taxonomy had differences in the rate of technological innovation specialised suppliers and science based firms were found to have higher rates of innovation than supplier dominated and scale intensive ones most importantly different variables proved to be significantly associated with innovation for each category of firms innovation for supplier dominated firms was related to the competitive environment acquisition of information technology strategy risk attitude and internal co ordination for scale intensive firms the important determinants were related to the ability to raise funding and the education and experience of personnel for specialised suppliers innovation was associated with high growth rate and exporting as well as training and incentives offered to the employees to contribute towards innovation science based firms depended upon technology related variables education and experience of personnel growth in profitability and panel discussions with lead customers the application of pavitt s model can resolve the apparent problem of inconsistent results in the management research on the determinants of technological innovation

urban diversity and economic growth at the risk of some simplification it is possible to identify four periods of intense study of cities by economists each of these has led to an increased understanding of the economics of urban areas and the unique role played by cities in the modem economy the first of these periods occurred in the decade after world war i only about ten years after the truck revolutionized the transport of goods within urban areas this period included the first systematic empirical analysis of the forces affecting the location of firms and households within cities robert murray haig 1926 and a number of other microeconomists at columbia analyzed the spatial pattems of manufacturing activity in lower manhattan and in the rest of new york city haig jmd his colleagues devoted considerable attention to where things belong in an urban area p 402 providing the first systematic economic analysis of urban spatial structure for example they analyzed the garment industry concluding that it was destined by nature to disperse north of 14th street and predicting that it would follow the estabhshed spatial pattem of the cooperage barrelmaking industry standardization in size and quality of barrels had meant that identical barrels could be made throughout the new york metropolitan area even in new jersey and the introduction of the truck meant that they could be transported cheaply throughout the region and exported the second of these periods though not in chronological order began in the mid 1960s it formalized many of the insights about location incentives within urban areas which had been uncovered a half century before mixed them with the logic of heinrich von thunen s 1826 ancient theories about agricultural crops and land values and applied them to the hotisehold sector the works of william alonso 1964

towards a general theory of mixed zones the role of congestion mixed commercial and residential land use is observed in most cities around the world despite its ubiquity urban economic theory is rather silent on the formation of mixed land use in particular standard bid rent models typically predict complete segregation of land use the two main exceptions are fujita and ogawa 1982 and lucas and rossi hansberg 2002 who introduce bid rent models that allow for endogenous business and residential location choice as well as employment agglomeration externalities these models predict zones that are characterized by a restrictive type of mixed land use where there are as many residents as jobs at every location we extend the latter model by introducing a traffic congestion external effect that adds a degree of freedom to the shape of the bid rent curves and allows them to coincide over contiguous locations in the city where commuting takes place we show that this combination of congestion and agglomeration externalities leads to a general type of mixed land use zones

spatial equilibrium with unemployment and wage bargaining theory and estimation abstract in this paper we present a spatial equilibrium model where search frictions hinder the immediate reallocation of workers both within and across local labor markets because of the frictions firms and workers find themselves in bilateral monopoly positions when determining wages although workers are not at each instant perfectly mobile across cities in the baseline model we assume that workers flows are sufficient to equate expected utility across markets we use the model to explore the joint determination of wages unemployment house prices and city size or migration a key role of the model is to clarify conditions under which this type of spatial equilibrium setup can be estimated we then use u s data over the period 1970 2007 to explore the fit and quantitative properties of the model our main goal is to highlight forces that influence spatial equilibria at 10 year intervals

firm growth in industrial clusters of the united kingdom this article examines how firm growth is influenced by the strength of the industrial cluster in which the firm is located it presents econometric estimates of firm growth for 56 two digit industries in the uk in about half of these industries there is a positive and statistically significant association between firm growth and own sector employment significant associations between firm growth and other sector employment are less common but where these arise they are generally negative we find that a weak rule of thumb applies in most industries own sector effects are positive or insignificant while other sector effects are negative or insignificant cluster effects are strongest in manufacturing manufacturing related and infrastructure but weaker in services

the price of gold and the exchange rate abstract this paper examines the theoretical relationship between the major exchange rates and the prices of internationally traded commodities in the empirical section the case of gold is analyzed using forecast error data among other things it is found that since the dissolution of the bretton woods international monetary system floating exchange rates among the major currencies have been a major source of price instability in the world gold market and as the world gold market is dominated by the european currency bloc appreciations or depreciations of european currencies have strong effects on the price of gold in other currencies

regional clustering of high technology based firms opto electronics in three countries hendry c brown j and defillippi r 2000 regional clustering of high technology based firms opto electronics in three countries reg studies 34 129 144 industrial districts are seen as generating significant advantages in production and innovation however the way concentrations of firms actually relate to one another is often assumed this paper draws on an international study into the opto electronics industry to examine the extent and significance of localized inter company trading and network relationships in six regions national and international relationships are found to be much stronger than local ones this is a function of customer and supplier markets which derive from the technological characteristics of the industry and the way its markets have been created such factors are important for understanding the potential for the development of industrial districts in high technology sectors hendry c brown j et defillippi r 2000 grappes regionales d entreprises a la pointe de la

industrial dynamics and economic geography capasso m stam e and cefis e industrial dynamics and economic geography regional studies how do industries emerge and evolve over space in this special issue the fields of industrial dynamics and economic geography are brought together in order to achieve a richer and more fundamental understanding of the organization of industries over time and space than each of these fields could do separately firm heterogeneity at the micro level and industry composition of a region at the macro level provide important elements in the explanation of industry emergence and evolution over space history and space matter in the evolution of industries this special issue shows how and why