Regions can benefit by offering infrastructure services that are differentiated by quality, thus segmenting the market for industrial location. Regions that compete on infrastructure quality have an incentive to increase the degree of differentiation between them. This places an upper bound on...

Despite massive regional policy efforts, GDP per capita in Southern Italy has only briefly converged on Northern Italian levels (during the 1960s). Failure since then is associated with a policy switch from investment towards income maintenance, with reduced wage sensitivity to regional labour...

This paper applies a modified version of the `income choice' model to explain variations in new-firm formation across Italian provinces over the period 1985-8. Based on a panel data of start-up activity in 78 Italian provinces and using two different databases, we find support for the overall...

This Paper studies the welfare implications of the location decisions of innovative newcomers that, though spinning off an industrial district, may choose whether to locate inside or outside its borders. Even if this choice has always been relevant, globalization has turned the issue, whether to...

This Paper develops a methodology to compute transport costs at low infra-country geographical levels. This simultaneously accounts for the real network infrastructure, a distance cost (fuel, repair, tolls), and a time opportunity cost (wages, insurance and general charges, vehicle use). When...

In this Paper we aim to examine the regional impact of foreign-owned establishments on the performance of domestic establishments in the electronics industry in the UK. We use establishment-level data taken from the UK Census of Production (the ARD) to this end. In the econometric specification,...

Major economic transitions, even when they are disruptive, do not occur instantaneously but rather occur over time, as regions within a country change at different rates. Accordingly, these dynamics may be reflected in a geographic lifecycle with different regions characterized by different...

We use a rich personnel data set from a Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 to analyze how the financial crisis in 1998 and the resulting change in external labour market conditions affect the wages and the welfare of workers inside a firm. We provide evidence that large shocks to external...

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a recent survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit an examination of several important measurement issues – including the timing and definition of employment, the roles of...