Do Migrants Follow Market Potentials? An Estimation of a New Economic Geography Model

New Economic Geography models describe a cumulative process of spatial agglomeration: Firms tend to cluster in locations with good access to demand, and similarly, workers are drawn to regions where market potential is high because the price index is lower there. This paper provides an empirical assessment of this forward linkage that relates labour migrations to the geography of production through real wage differentials. In the spirit of Hanson (1998), we use bilateral migration data for five European countries over the 1980s and 1990s to perform quasi-structural estimations of a new economic geography model derived from Krugman (1991). The results show strong evidence in favor of this model. As expected, migrants do follow market potential. Moreover, we provide estimates for all key parameters of the model. These estimates suggest that a sudden emergence of a core-periphery pattern is unlikely within European countries: centripetal forces are too limited in geographical scope, and mobility costs are too high.Agglomeration, economic geography, European regions, migration.

EU Enlargement and the Internal Geography of Countries

This paper focuses on the relation between trade openness and the location of economicactivity in a country. The problematic lies in the context of the EU enlargement process and ofits impact on the location of economic activity inside each of the accessing countries. We develop a new economic geography model based on the original Krugman (1991) model, and show that trade liberalization will foster agglomeration of economic activity in the location that has the lowest-cost access to foreign markets. Our results thus differ from Krugman and Livas's (1996) conclusions. We expect the CEECs' economies to shift economic activity towards EU markets. We provide empirical evidence of this result focusing on the post-1991 Romanian urban system.economic integration; urban concentration; agglomeration; CEECs

The Cohesion vs Growth Tradeoff - Evidence from EU Regions (1980-2000)

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the cohesion versus growth tradeoff on European regions at a fine geographical disaggregation level. We use data on gdp per capita at the NUTS3 level for 1980-2000 to estimate the influence of income dispersion within NUTS1 on their economic growth. We analyze the existence of the tradeoff using Redding and Venables’(2004) approach. From a simple new economic geography model in which we add a technological externality in order to allow for local growth, we derive an estimable equation linking the level of factor prices in a region to the level of inequalities inside that region, as well as the region’s access to markets. Our results show a positive relation between the gdp per capita growth rate of a region and the change in the level of inequalities inside the region. Finally, an increase in market potential, as expected, has an unambiguous positive impact on local growth.

Trade performances, product quality perceptions and the estimation of trade price-elasticities

Traditional trade models ignoring the dimension of product quality generally lead to excessively low trade price elasticities. In this paper, we show that higher estimated trade price elasticities, more in conformity with theory, can be obtained by controlling product quality in trade equations. To do so, we have estimated trade equations including a product quality proxy derived from survey data. Our estimation results, based on panel data for the four main EU member States, confirm the part played by product quality in the estimation of trade price elasticities, at least for traditionally highly differentiated products.Trade performances ; trade equations ; trade price elasticities ; imperfect competition ;product differentiation ; quality ; unit value indices

QUALITY SORTING AND TRADE: FIRM-LEVEL EVIDENCE FOR FRENCH WINE

Quality sorting and trade: Firm-level evidence for French wine Investigations of the effect of quality differences on heterogeneous performance in exporting have been limited by lack of direct measures of quality. We examine exports of French wine, matching the exporting firms to producer ratings from two wine guides. We show that high quality producers export to more markets, charge higher prices, and sell more in each market. More attractive markets are served by exporters that, on average, make lower rated Champagne. Market attractiveness has a weakly negative effect on prices and a strongly positive effect on quantities, confirming the sign predictions of a simple quality sorting model. Methodologically, we make several contributions to the literature. First, we propose an estimation method for regressions of firm-level exports on ability measures and use Monte Carlo simulations to show that it corrects a severe selection bias present in OLS estimates. Second, we show how the means of quality, price, and quantity for exporters to a given market can be used to recover estimates of core parameters (which we compare with firm-level estimates) and discriminate between productivity and quality-sorting versions of the Melitz model. Our new method regresses country means on an index of each country's attractiveness and the fixed costs of entering it. We compare our method, which utilizes explanatory variables estimated in the firm-level regressions, to the conventional approach that relies on a reduced-form relationship with proxies for attractiveness and fixed costs.Industrial Organization, F12,

The Carrers of Social Science Doctoral Graduates in France: the Influence of How the Research was Carried Out

The variables determining the attractiveness of social science PhDs remain unknown. A study on the job position of PhD graduates in the social sciences in Grenoble (1984-1996) was carried out to gain insight into the relationship between the research environment during the PhD (funding and time available for the research, i.e. full-time versus part-time), the quality of research (estimated by distinctions and publications) and PhD students' initial training. The conditions in which the doctoral research is carried out have a crucial influence on the job position the graduate is subsequently able to find. PhD graduates are thus locked into trajectories they may not have chosen because of the lack of information needed to make rational decisions. Empirical analysis helps to improve PhD training. Keywords: PhD graduates, professional trajectories, job position, higher education, university, social sciences.

Work Organisation and Innovation - Case Study: FAVI, France

[Excerpt] FAVI is an SME based in Hallencourt in the Somme, a département in the Picardy region of France. It is a pressure die-casting company specialising in copper alloys that currently employs 406 people. The company designs, optimises, smelts, machines and assembles copper alloy pieces. Interns can at times account for 10% of the workforce. Founded in 1957, this société anonyme (public limited company) with a capital of €960,000, is part of the AFICA Group, which purchased FAVI in 1971

Enlargement and the EU Periphery: The Impact of Changing Market Potential

We study the impact of changing relative market access in an enlarged EU on the economies of incumbent Objective 1 regions. First, we track the impact of external opening on internal spatial configurations in a three-region economic geography model. External opening gives rise to potentially offsetting economic forces, but for most parameter configurations it is found to raise the locational attractiveness of the region that is close to the external market. Then, we explore the relation between market access and economic activity empirically, using data for European regions, and we simulate the impact of EU enlargement on Objective 1 regions. Our predicted market-access induced gains in regional GDP and manufacturing employment are up to seven times larger in regions proximate to the new accession countries than in “interior” EU regions. We also find that a future Balkans enlargement could be particularly effective in reducing economic inequalities among the EU periphery, due to the positive impact on relative market access of Greek regions.New economic geography, Market potential, EU enlargement, Objective 1 regions

Do Migrants Follow Market Potentials? An Estimation of a New Economic Geography Model

International audienceNew Economic Geography models describe a cumulative process of spatial agglomeration: Firms tend to cluster in locations with good access to demand, and similarly, workers are drawn to regions where market potential is high because the price index is lower there. This paper provides an empirical assessment of this forward linkage that relates labour migrations to the geography of production through real wage differentials. In the spirit of Hanson (1998), we use bilateral migration data for five European countries over the 1980s and 1990s to perform quasi-structural estimations of a new economic geography model derived from Krugman (1991). The results show strong evidence in favor of this model. As expected, migrants do follow market potential. Moreover, we provide estimates for all key parameters of the model. These estimates suggest that a sudden emergence of a core-periphery pattern is unlikely within European countries: centripetal forces are too limited in geographical scope, and mobility costs are too high