Do Agglomeration and Technology Affect Vertical Integration? Evidence from Italian Business Groups

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of technology and spatial agglomeration in decisions about vertical integration. It starts from the hypothesis that the business group, defined as a set of firms under common ownership and control, is the appropriate unit to delimit the firm’s boundary. We use information drawn from input–output tables to detect the presence of positive inter‐industry exchanges and whether or not activities in a group are vertically related. Accounting for endogeneity problems, we estimate Probit and Linear Probability models to investigate the role of technology and spatial agglomeration on vertical integration decisions empirically. Consistent with property rights theory, our results show that the technology intensity of acquirers matters for backward integration choices and, moreover, that agglomeration plays a role in vertical integration only when it operates jointly with technology.     

黑龙江省装备制造业集聚水平的实证分析

依据2001年到2007年《中国统计年鉴》和《黑龙江省统计年鉴》的有关数据,选用区位商作为测量工具,对黑龙江省装备制造业的集聚水平进行了深入的剖析,计算结果表明:黑龙江省通用设备制造业和专业设备制造业的产业集聚程度比较高;而通信设备、计算机及电子设备制造业的集聚程度比较低。黑龙江省装备制造业聚集水平与工业经济增长存在着高度正相关的关系。     

中国制造业区域聚集及国际比较

本文利用Ellison and Glaeser(1997)衡量行业区域聚集和共同聚集的指标体系,考察中国制造业的区域聚集程度在1998至2003年间的发展趋势,并进行了国际比较。我们发现中国的行业区域聚集程度仍处在一个上升阶段。我们还注意到,无论就行业区域聚集程度还是行业区域共同聚集程度而言,中国目前仍低于西方发达国家近期的水平。     

Shopping centre clusters: Competition or synergies? The case of the region of murcia (Spain)

Since their emergence in the mid 1950s, the role of shopping centres has evolved and they have now become key articulating elements of urban and metropolitan peripheral areas. In Spain, the opening of new out-of-town shopping centres intensified after the year 2000, thanks to an increased area dedicated to new leisure-related uses and activities. This process has been particularly prevalent in the regions in the south-east of Spain such as Alicante-Elche, Murcia and Valencia which are supported by high capacity regional and national road networks. In the case of Murcia, of its ten shopping centres, three of them, Thader, IKEA and Nueva Condomina, are very close to one another, and two of them - Thader and IKEA - are just 650 m apart. The objective of this study is to analyse whether this proximity between shopping centres generates synergies among them based on agglomeration economies or, on the contrary, whether it gives rise to competition between the different centres. For the purpose of this study, these highly specialised shopping centres have been considered and a field study has been conducted based on the administration of surveys among the customers of these shopping centres. The results show that the synergies with those shopping centres which have a diverse retail mix seem to be linked to those users who have a longer journey time and visit these shopping centres more frequently. On the other hand, in the case of non-regular or sporadic customers of these large, highly specialised shopping centres, we can observe direct competition with the rest of the shopping centres, revealing an absence of agglomeration economies.     

高技术产业集聚度与生态环境耦合关系演化研究

为促进高技术产业集聚与生态环境在互动中实现协调可持续发展，在分析高技术产业集聚和生态环境耦合机理的基础上，采用耦合协调模型和空间自相关方法对2003—2017年我国内地30个省份面板数据进行分析，探究高技术产业集聚和生态环境之间耦合协调程度及其时空演化特征。结果发现：耦合协调度总体稳步提升，但存在区域差异；耦合协调等级有待提高，大部分地区经历了高技术产业集聚发展滞后、高技术产业集聚和生态环境同步发展、生态环境发展滞后3种耦合协调类型；耦合协调度相似地区在空间上趋于集中分布，热点地区从沿海向内陆迁移。最后，从树立协同发展理念、建立动态监测系统、加强地区间合作与交流3个方面提出相应建议。     

You’re the Only One,or Simply the Best. Hotels differentiation,competition, agglomeration,and pricing

Drawing on competition, signalling and agglomeration perspectives, we investigate how vertical and horizontal differentiation influence price, and how hotel competition and agglomeration may moderate any such effects. We argue that vertical differentiation should include online reputation to complement category, and that hotel clustering can provide benefits for incumbents. Hypotheses are tested using quantile regression on a sample of 1870 hotels. In order to account for any service dimensions, an index of differentiation is estimated. We found that local competition and agglomeration moderates the relationship between differentiation and pricing. Furthermore, online reputation effects are more intense for low priced hotels. Indeed, when competition is intense, the positive effect of horizontal differentiation is lower for low priced hotels. Similarly, hotel clustering reinforces the impact of category on price, but it reduces the benefits of offering more services.     

Foreign direct investment and industrial agglomeration: Evidence from India

This study analyses the spatial and sectoral distribution of Greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (GFDI) and its impact on industrial agglomeration in India for the time period 2006–2015. We employ a unique dataset obtained by merging GFDI data from FDI Markets and plant level data from Annual Survey of Industries (ASI). We find that the Indian manufacturing sector shows signs of industrial dispersion rather than agglomeration throughout the sample period. Likewise, the spatial distribution pattern of GFDI also shows a decline in regional concentration and, interestingly, GFDI also seems to target new destinations. We also find that the increased spatial spread of GFDI leads to an industrial dispersion in Indian manufacturing industries.     

我国产业集聚原因的探讨——基于区域效应、集聚效应、空间成本的新视角

产业集聚是区域效应、集聚效应、空间成本联合作用的结果,单独强调任何一方面都有所偏颇.我国产业集聚的形成和发展,既有区域效应的作用,也有集聚效应的作用,其对产业集聚的影响都是动态变化的,空间成本的降低也有利于我国产业的地理集聚.     

A two-region model with two types of manufacturing technologies and agglomeration

A two-region model is proposed in this paper. Manufactured goods can be produced with cottage technology under constant returns to scale or with modern technology using differentiated intermediate goods, which are produced with increasing returns to scale technology. In the model, there may be multiple equilibria, and, in such cases, the initial conditions determine the equilibrium that the economy reaches. It is shown that strong increasing returns due to specialization and low transportation costs bring about industrialization with agglomeration. This framework explains the mechanism behind the different industrialization process in Japan and in less developed countries.     

Job hopping, earnings dynamics, and industrial agglomeration in the software publishing industry

This paper investigates the implications of industrial clustering for labor mobility and earnings dynamics in one large and increasingly important high-technology sector. Taking advantage of longitudinal employee-employer matched data, I exploit establishment-level variation in agglomeration to explore how clustering in the software publishing industry affects labor market outcomes. The results show that clustering makes it easier for workers to job hop within the sector. Higher earnings levels in more agglomerated areas are partly attributable to sorting across locations among workers and firms in the industry on the basis of observable and unobservable characteristics. Controlling for this heterogeneity, workers in clusters have relatively steep earnings-tenure profiles, accepting lower wages early in their careers in exchange for stronger earnings growth and higher wages later. These findings are consistent with theoretical models in which agglomeration improves labor market coordination and facilitates greater learning and human capital formation.