From the perspective of an existing retailer, the optimal size of a cluster of retail activity represents a trade-off between the marginal increases in consumer attraction from another store against the depletion of the customer base caused by an additional competitor. We estimate opening and...

We study neighbourhood externalities caused by large public investments in poor neighbourhoods. A stylised theory of a linear city is proposed to guide interpretation of the magnitude and attenuation of the external effects generated by these public investments. We use a large Dutch nationwide...

Theory predicts intense price competition when firms cluster with rivals. Yet, strong evidence of clustering is found in previous empirical research. Researchers typically measure clustering by comparing observed location patterns to random assignment. The random assignment benchmark does not,...

A prominent feature of economic geography in America is the positive correlation amongst local incomes, housing costs and city population. This paper embeds a "black box" agglomeration economy within a more neoclassical general equilibrium model of local wages, rents and population to assess the...

This paper revisits a classical inquiry by addressing the question of localization and urbanization economies. We propose that specialization and diversity may offer externalities operating at different spatial scales. Using high-resolution geo-coded plant-level panel data for Swedish cities...

About 30 years after German reunification a persistent gap in different firm performance measures exists between East and West Germany. In this paper I focus on the differences in new German manufacturing plants' location choices across the German district-free cities and districts and...

Almost 30 years after German reunification, a persistent gap in different firm performance measures exists between East and West Germany. In this paper I focus on the differences in new German manufacturing plants' location choices across the German district-free cities and districts and...

Can the demise of the monocentric economy across cities during the 20th century be explained by decreasing transport costs to the city center or are other fundamental forces at work? Taking a hybrid perspec¬tive of classical bid-rent theory and a world where clustering of economic activity is...

In this paper I measure the impact of urbanisation and localisation economies on commercial rents (offices and industrial buildings) using unique micro-data on both commercial property transactions, as well as all firm (establishment) locations. I add to the literature in three important ways....