We argue that identification problems bedevil most applied spatial research. Spatial econometrics solves these problems by deriving estimators assuming that functional forms are known and by using model comparison techniques to let the data choose between competing specifications. We argue that...

This paper examines the relationship between the level of public infrastructure and the level of productivity using panel data for the Spanish provinces over the period 1984-2004, a period which is particularly relevant due to the substantial changes occurring in the Spanish economy at that...

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive effect, others speak about a 'dark side' of social capital. This paper aims...

Firms generally choose to locate their production where profits are maximized. As costs affect profits, trade-offs between two marginal costs - employees' wages and transport costs - may be important for decisions regarding location. Wages tend to be greater in industrial centres and decrease as...

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration externalities on hourly earnings using longitudinal worker micro-level data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings over the period 2002- 2006. We find that the effect of agglomeration externalities on wages is sensitive to the estimator used....

Using water supply as a model for a wider range of infrastructure services, the effect of a negative exponential density gradient on distribution costs is investigated for four monocentric urban development scenarios: (a) Densification; (b) Dispersion; (c) Suburbanisation; and (d) Constant...

This study examines how far and in what way 'Our cities are back', as claimed by England's Core Cities Group. It focuses on 1984-2007 employment changes for the eight Core Cities and their city regions: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. City...

Prediction is difficult. In this paper we use panel data methods to make reasonably accurate shortterm ex-post predictions of house prices across 353 local authority areas in England. The issue of prediction over the longer term is also addressed, and a simple method that makes use of the...

i. A completely revised version of this paper is available as SERCDP0080, May 2011. We examine the long-term effects of resettling 11 percent of the Finnish population from areas ceded to the Soviet Union during World War II. Our empirical strategy exploits features of the resettlement policy as...

We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late nineties. Using .ne-grained data on branch network dynamics within the metropolitan...