This paper deals with the relationship between decentralisation, regional economic development, and income inequality within regions. Using multiplicative interaction models and regionally aggregated microeconomic data for more than 100,000 individuals in the European Union (EU), it addresses...

This paper analyzes some of the consequences of economic and monetary union of the two Germanies. Particular emphasis is given to the real implications for the supply side of the German Democratic Republic and for resource flows between two economic regions.

We explore the role of human capital investments in the location decisions of firms. We show that whether human capital investments act as a force for or against concentration depends on who is undertaking them and whether they are industry- or firm-specific. We also discuss the empirical...

In modern economies, the amount of profits distributed to shareholders is far from being negligible. We show that the way profits are distributed among agents matters for the space-economy. For example, the existence of mobile rentiers is sufficient to make the symmetric configuration unstable...

We develop a model in which two regional governments compete for a mobile oligopolistic firm by publicly providing local inputs. The central mechanism of our model is the interaction of an agglomeration advantage (partial non-rivalness of the local input) and an agglomeration disadvantage (fixed...

We use Italian firm-level data to investigate the impact of trade openness on the distribution of firms across marginal cost levels. In so doing, we implement a procedure that allows us to control not only for the standard transmission bias identified in firm-level TFP regressions but also for...

In models with heterogeneous firms trade integration has a positive impact on aggregate productivity through the selection of the best firms as import competition drives the least productive ones out of the market. To quantify the impact of firm selection on productivity, we calibrate and...

This Paper 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...

We show in the framework of a new economic geography model that when labour is heterogenous and productivity depends on the quality of the match between job and worker, trade liberalization may lead to industrial agglomeration and inter-industry trade. The agglomeration force is the improvement...

The Paper examines the interactions between economic integration and population agglomeration in a middle product economy displaying neoclassical growth. There are two vertically-integrated economies. Each consists of a large number of final good competitive firms operating plants in both...