Ex-ante regulations and ex-post liabilities for using a new technology will induce additional costs for adopters. The standard model is advanced by including irreversibility and uncertainty and taking into account transaction costs of negotiating possible cost reductions. The case analysed is...

The objective of the paper is to assess the effects of spatial agglomeration on the technical efficiency of French pig farms. We use a two-stage method with the first stage consisting of calculating the efficiency scores of pig activity with the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)...

Ex-ante regulations and ex-post liabilities for using a new technology will induce additional costs for adopters. The standard model is advanced by including irreversibility and uncertainty and taking into account transaction costs of negotiating possible cost reductions. The case analysed is...

We examine whether discretionary government grants influence the location of new plants, and how effective these incentives are in the presence of agglomeration and urbanisation externalities. We find evidence that regional industrial structure affects the location of new entrants. Firms in more...

This paper assesses the agglomeration pattern of four-digit industries in Germany using a rich data set on the population of German firms. To identify geographical agglomeration, we follow the distance based approach of Duranton and Overman (2005) and find that the location pattern of 78% of our...

This paper shows that subsidy competition may be efficiency enhancing. We model a subsidy game among two asymmetric regions in a new trade model, where capital can freely move among regions, but capital rewards are repatriated. We study subsidy competition, starting from an equilibrium where the...

The paper analyzes the impact of skill-biased migration policies under the economics of agglomeration. It therefore develops an agglomeration model with two types of mobile worker who are heterogeneous and differ both within and between skill groups with respect to their migration propensity. On...

Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence on the one hand and persistent or even increasing...

In order to evaluate the allocational effectiveness of regional policy when harmonizing regional economic conditions firms? preferences play a pivot role. If harmonization hinders risk diversification of the firm, then instead of regional diversification of capital agglomeration of capital...

This paper focuses on the pre-establishment period of start-ups in industrial districts. The industrial architecture is what I call a "rationed agglomeration" in which some entrepreneurs gather around an established firm while other entrepreneurs in the same business stand alone. In a rationed...