Labor density and productivity in Spain: Evidence from geographically disaggregated data

In this paper we estimate agglomeration economies in Spain in 2009 basing on Ciccone?s (2002) model, which explains average labor productivity in one spatial unit on employment density and other controls. The novelty of our analysis is that the empirical model is estimated at a highly disaggregated spatial scale, oppositely to the convention of taking as unit of analysis NUTS-2 or NUTS-3 regions. Recent contributions to New Economic Geography (NEG) base their theoretical analysis on geographical units defined at a more disaggregated spatial scale than these administratively defined regions. Specifically, from a sample of income-taxpayers published by the Spanish Fiscal Studies Institute -Instituto de Estudios Fiscales- we derive figures on average wages by worker at the scale of Local Labor Markets (LLMs). The empirical analysis bases on several estimation strategies; namely, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Two-Stages Least Squares (2SLS), Quantile Regressions (QR) and Instrumental Variable Quantile Regressions (IVQR) estimators, all they finding a significantly positive effect of agglomeration in the conditional mean of labor productivity. Additionally, the QR and IVQR estimators find a progressively decreasing, but still positive, effect of employment density along the conditional distribution of labor productivity

Does trade imply convergence? Analyzing the effect of NAFTA & distance on the local convergence in Mexico

Regional Economics and Economic Growth focus on the question of trade leads to a greater concentration of economic activity. Yet little empirical work has assessed the regional convergence impacts of trade. Therefore this paper studies the regional convergence from trade in Mexico after NAFTA. Unlike previous papers, working with municipal-level data allows to observe more clearly the convergence patterns across space and to identify the effect of NAFTA, respectively. Result shows that after NAFTA, convergence in regions near the U.S. border grew faster than those further away. However, there is a significant reduction of the beta coefficient after NAFTA indicating a slowdown in the convergence rate. Additional, we find that those municipalities in the south have not been integrated in the world markets, and have, instead, lagged behind their counterparts after NAFTA

Mapping poverty at the local level in Europe: A consistent spatial disaggregation of the AROPE indicator for France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom

In the EU, territorial inequalities in terms of income and poverty have been broadly analysed at the national and regional levels. However, mainly due to the lack of reliable data, very little attention has been paid to territorial inequalities within European regions, namely, at a more local level, such as in metropolitan areas, cities or neighbourhoods. This paper proposes a methodology to disaggregate official regional poverty figures into poverty indicators for smaller spatial units, mainly local administrative units. For each country, poverty figures at the regional level from household surveys are combined with microcensus data that contain details on the local entities of residence to disaggregate the regional poverty indicator. In contrast to previous methodologies, our proposed technique guarantees consistency between the local poverty estimates and the regional poverty figures through a second step that adjusts the initial estimates based on generalized cross entropy. The procedure is applied for four European countries: France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal. The resulting local estimates provide an intraregional map of poverty and some insights into the particular behaviour of the capital regions and the disparities between city centres and their surrounding areas.En la UE, las desigualdades territoriales en cuanto a ingresos y pobreza se han analizado ampliamente a nivel nacional y regional. Sin embargo, debido principalmente a la falta de datos fiables, se ha prestado muy poca atención a las desigualdades territoriales dentro de las regiones europeas a un nivel más local, como pueden ser las zonas metropolitanas, las ciudades o los barrios. En el presente artículo se propone una metodología para desglosar las cifras regionales oficiales de pobreza en indicadores de pobreza para unidades espaciales más pequeñas, principalmente unidades administrativas locales. Para cada país, se combinan las cifras de pobreza a nivel regional procedentes de las encuestas de hogares con datos de microcensos que contienen detalles sobre las entidades locales de residencia para desglosar el indicador de pobreza regional. A diferencia de las metodologías anteriores, la técnica que se propone aquí garantiza la coherencia entre las estimaciones de pobreza locales y las cifras de pobreza regionales mediante un segundo paso que ajusta las estimaciones iniciales basadas en la entropía cruzada generalizada. El procedimiento se aplica en cuatro países europeos: Francia, España, el Reino Unido y Portugal. Las estimaciones locales resultantes proporcionan un mapa intrarregional de la pobreza y algunas percepciones del comportamiento particular de las regiones que albergan la capital y las disparidades entre los centros de las ciudades y sus zonas circundantes

The role of spatial scale in convergence studies: Exploring the consequences of MAUP in empirical analysis

The empirical analysis of regional convergence is normally based on data collected at the administrative divisions of the territory level. However, as endogenous growth theories highlighted, large cities and central areas usually grow faster than rural and peripheral areas. So, it could be more realistic considering that the dynamics that generate economic growth take place at a smaller scale. These potential differences across sub-regional areas might be lost if the analysis is made at the NUTS II or III level (in the case of the EU countries), generating the so-called Modifiable Area Unit Problem (MAUP). The objective of this paper is to explore to which extent the MAUP bias could affect convergence analysis. By means of a Montecarlo simulation, we study how the beta-convergence results could be affected by using different levels of geographical aggregation. Several hypotheses about the generating process of local growth are considered in the simulation, according with the neo-classical and the New Economic Geography models, and the relevance of the MAUP is evaluated under different theoretical scenario

¿El comercio lleva a la convergencia? Un análisis del efecto del TLCAN sobre la convergencia local en México

Antecedentes: La economía regional y el crecimiento económico se enfocan en la pregunta de si el comercio conlleva a una mayor concentración de la actividad económica. No obstante, pocos trabajos empíricos han evaluado los impactos del comercio en la convergencia regional. Por lo tanto, este trabajo estudia la convergencia derivada del comercio de México después del Tratado de Libre Comercio de América Norte ( TLCAN ). A diferencia de trabajos previos, los da- tos a nivel municipal permiten observar mejor los patrones de convergencia en el espacio e identificar el efecto del TLCAN . Métodos: Se diseñaron un modelo de convergencia β condicional y un modelo de convergencia β condicional de clubes. Sin embargo, a diferencia de estudios empí- ricos anteriores, se utilizan datos municipales de panel para identificar con mayor claridad la relación entre el comercio y la convergencia regional, además se inclu- yen datos de los censos económicos de 2009 para observar si, después de 15 años de la entrada en vigor del TLCAN , la actividad económica se ha descentralizado y se ha trasladado de la Ciudad de México a las regiones fronterizas con los Estados Unidos. Resultados: Los resultados muestran que, después de la implementación del TLCAN , la convergencia entre regiones cercanas a la frontera con los Estados Unidos creció más rápidamente que en aquéllas cuya posición geográfica es más lejana. Sin embargo, hay una reducción significativa de los coeficientes β después del TLCAN , lo que indica una ralentización de la tasa de convergencia. Asimismo, se halla que los municipios del sur no se han integrado a los mercados del mundo; por el contrario, se han quedado rezagados con respecto a sus contrapartes des- pués de la implementación del TLCAN . Conclusiones: A pesar de que las fuerzas centrífugas están empezando a funcionar, hay una reducción significativa del coeficiente β después de la entrada en vigor del TLCAN . Esto indica que se necesitan mejores políticas para controlar el aumen - to de las disparidades regionales