This paper investigates firm-level dynamics of labour productivity in China's manufacturing sector over the 1998-2007. Underlying the aggregate evidence of dramatic growth of labour productivity, one observes a large, even if shrinking, intra-sectoral heterogeneity. A major process of both...

In this paper we study a class of evolutionary models of industrial agglomeration with local positive feedbacks, which allow for a wide set of empirically-testable implications. Their roots rest in the Generalized Polya Urn framework. Here, however, we build on a birth-death process over a...

This work explores the spatial distribution of productive activities in the Italian manufacturing industry. We propose an econometric model which tries to disentangle locationspecific from sectoral drivers in the dynamic process of spatial agglomeration. The basic idea is that the former...

In this contribution we offer a broad overview of the technological, institutional and policy dynamics associated with the great transformation - borrowing Karl Polanyi (1944) expression - leading from traditional, mostly rural, economies to economies driven by industrial activities (and...