The literature on China indicates that the concentration of economic activities in China is less than in other industrialized countries. Institutional limits are largely held responsible for this finding (e.g. the Hukou system); firms and workers are not able to take full advantage of the...

Foreign direct investments (FDI) are an important determinant of economic growth. Coun-tries try to attract mobile capital in order to foster economic development, albeit FDI might increase regional inequality since the many different regions of a country usually do not receive FDI in equal...

In contrast to what several papers have argued recently, we show that firm heterogeneity fosters agglomeration of economic activity. If firms are more similar with respect to their total factor productivity, each company faces a lower propensity to export. This renders the home market more...

We analyze the efficiency of urbanization patterns in a stylized dynamic model of urban growth with three sectors of production. Pollution, as a force that discourages agglomeration, is caused by domestic production. We show that cities are too large and too few in number in uncoordinated...

We analyse empirically the effects of urbanization on Italian college graduates’ work possibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that doubling the province of work’s population density reduces the chances of being an entrepreneur by 2-3 percentage points. This...

This article investigates whether the distance between origin and destination has played an increased role in shaping Italy’s domestic tourism flows during the recent years of economic recession. Indeed, the occurrence of closer tourism destinations, as a consequence of the economic crisis,...

Lumpiness of production factors within a country might overturn the predictions for the structure of trade by the factor-abundance (HO) model. Trade patterns, as predicted by this model, can both be magnified or reversed by uneven concentration of production factors within a country. Cities are...

Increasing-returns-to-scale imperfect competition trade models predict a more than proportionate relationship between the larger country’s share in world endowments and its share in producing firms: the so called home market effect (HME). While this result plays a key role in empirical...

We examine the effects of differences in income tax rates on commuting times within multi-state MSAs. Our theoretical model introduces a border into a model of an urban area and shows that differences in average tax rates distort commute times and interstate commutes. Empirically examining...

After World War II, town twinning became popular, notably in Germany. This was mainly a reaction to the war experience, and it was aimed at creating renewed international understanding and co-operation between German cities and cities in other countries. The contacts created by town twinning...