The survival of firms under changes in the business environment caused by exogenous shocks can be explained using economic Darwinism. Exogenous shocks can cause 'cleansing effects'. Shocks clean out unproductive firms so that available resources are allocated to the remaining more productive...

The survival of firms under changes in the business environment caused by exogenous shocks may be explained using economic Darwinism. Exogenous shocks can cause ‘cleansing effects’ as shocks clean out unproductive firms so that available resources are allocated to the remaining more...

In consumer cities, the presence and location of immigrants impacts house prices through two channels, which both can be valued positively as well as negatively: (i) their presence and contribution to population diversity and (ii) the creation of immigrant-induced consumer amenities like those...

We consider whether external urban economic advantages (agglomeration economies) vary with time and space using a simple economic model and detailed micro-data on 134 locations in New Zealand for the period 1976-2018. We find subtle temporal variation, with estimates peaking in 1991 and then...

The direct impact of local public goods on welfare is relatively easy to measure from land rents. However, the indirect effects on home and job location, on land use, and on agglomeration benefits are hard to pin down. We develop a spatial general equilibrium model for the valuation of these...

There is large variation in trade patterns across the world. Despite the popular discussion on the ‘death of distance’, distance is still the most important variable explaining this variation. In explaining trade patterns across the worls, it is important to acknowledge the multiple...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of energy- and labour-productivity convergence at a detailed sectoral level for 14 OECD countries, covering the period 1970-1997. A -convergence analysis shows that the development of cross-country variation in productivity performance depends on the...

Discussion on the possibilities for and barriers to income convergence and catch-up growth is at the heart of the debate on European regional economic policy. This study presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of regional productivity growth in Europe, using the most recent Cambridge...

This paper empirically examines the heterogeneity in the effects of multiple dimensions of distance on trade across detailed product groups. Using finite mixture modelling on bilateral trade data at the 3-digit SITC level, we endogenously group product categories into an, a priori unknown,...

A large body of literature considers the productive advantages of cities, or "agglomeration economies". Most empirical studies report positive agglomeration economies, although large variation exists in the magnitude of estimates. We use a meta-analysis to explore this variation, drawing on...