Urbanisation Patterns: European vs Less Developed Countries

We develop a model in which the interaction between transport costs, increasing returns, and labour migration across sectors and regions creates a tendency for urban agglomeration. Demand from rural areas favours urban dispersion. European urbanisation took place mainly in the XIX Century, with higher costs of spatial interaction, weaker economics of scale, and less elastic supply of labour to the urban sector than in LDCs today. These factors, together with a bias in the transport networks of LDCs towards serving larger cities, could help explain why European countries have developed balanced urban systems while primate cities dominate in LDCs.

The Spread of Industry: Spatial Agglomeration in Economic Development

This paper describes the spread of industry from country to country as a region grows. All industrial sectors are initially agglomerated in one country, tied together by input-output links between firms. Growth expands industry more than other sectors, bidding up wages in the country in which industry is clustered. At some point some firms start to move away, and when a critical mass is reached industry expands in another country, raising wages there. We establish the circumstance sin which industry spill over, which sectors move out first, and which are more important in triggering a critical mass.

Agglomeration and cross-border infrastructure

This paper deals with the effects of cross-border transport infrastructure in the presence of agglomeration economies. Cross-border infrastructure is more likely to increase than to decrease inequalities between and within regions, and has not helped regional convergence in Europe. Under-investment due to spillovers, coordination failures, and the inadequacy of networks originally designed for national markets provide a role for supranational institutions. Hub-andspoke networks tend to increase urban primacy while cross-border transport connections tend to reduce it. Improvements in transport and communication allow firms to separate innovation, management and production, increasing efficiency and urban interdependence.transport; cross-border infrastructure; agglomeration; urban specialization

European regional policy in light of recent location theories

Despite large regional policy expenditures, regional inequalities in Europe have not narrowed substantially over the last two decades, and by some measures have even widened. Income differences across States have fallen, but inequalities between regions within each State have risen. European States have developed increasingly different production structures. And European regions have also become increasingly polarised in terms of their unemployment rates. This paper describes these trends, and discusses how recent location theories can help us to explain them and reconsider the role of regional policies, and specially of transport infrastructure improvements, in such an environment.regional policy; inequalities; transport infrastructure; location; Europe

Micro-Foundations of Urban Agglomeration Economies

This handbook chapter studies the theoretical micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies. We distinguish three types of micro-foundations, based on sharing, matching, and learning mechanisms. For each of these three categories, we develop one or more core models in detail and discuss the literature in relation to those models. This allows us to give a precise characterisation of some of the main theoretical underpinnings of urban agglomeration economies, to discuss modelling issues that arise when working with these tools, and to compare different sources of agglomeration economies in terms of the aggregate urban outcomes they produce as well as in terms of their normative implications.

Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation and the Life-Cycle of Products

A simple model of process innovation is proposed, where firms learn about their ideal production process by making prototypes. We build around this a dynamic general equilibrium model, and derive conditions under which diversified and specialised cities coexist. New products are developed in diversified cities, trying processes borrowed from different activities. On finding their ideal process, firms switch to mass-production and relocate to specialised cities with lower costs. When in equilibrium, this configuration welfare-dominates those with only diversified or only specialised cities. We find strong evidence of this relocation pattern in establishment relocations across French employment areas 1993û1996.Cities, diversity, specialisation, innovation, learning, life-cycle

Unemployment Clusters Across European Regions and Countries

European regions have experienced a polarisation of their unemployment rates between 1986 and 1996, as regions with intermediate rates have been driven by changes in regional employment, only partly offset by labour force changes. Regions' outcomes have closely followed those of neighbouring regions. This is only weakly explained by regions being part og the same member state, having a similar skill composition, or broad sectoral specialisation. Even more surpriisingly , foreign neighbours matter as much as domestic neighbours. All of this suggests a reorganisation of economic activities withh increasing disregard for national borders.

Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When does it Matter?

Why are some cities specialised and others diversified? What are the advantages and disadvantages of urban specialisation and diversity? To what extent does the structure of cities, and the activities of the firms and people in them, change over time? How does the sectoral composition of cities and influence their evolution? To answer these and related questions, we first distil some key stylised facts from the empirical literature on cities and the composition of their activities. We then turn ti a review of different theories looking ot such issues, and study the extent to which these theories contribute ti the understanding of the empirical regularities.

Agglomeration in a global Economy: A Survey

This review of recent contributions reveals common conclusions about the effects of integration on location. For high trade costs, the need to supply markets locally encourages firms to spread across different regions. Integration weakens the incentives for self-sufficiency and for intermediate values of trade costs pecuniary externalities induce firms and workers to cluster together, turning location into a self-reinforcing process. However, agglomeration raises the price of immobile local factors and goods, so far low transport costs firms may spread to regions where those prices are lower.