This work is an investigation of how spatial structure affects labour productivity in Italian provinces. The analysis draws on agglomeration theories, and analyzes whether agglomeration benefits are dependent on the way activities are spatially organized within regions. Urban spatial structures...

Metropolitan areas concentrate the main share of population, production and consumption in OECD countries. They are likely to be one of the most important units for economic, social and environmental analysis as well as for the development of policy strategies. However, one of the main problems...

Italy has been typically viewed as a strongly heterogeneous country in terms of regional and;sub-regional economic performances. On investigating such heterogeneity, this paper examines the determinants of Italian population growth at the urban level between 1991 and 2008. The empirical analysis...

Polycentric development is a widely-used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unknown and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition, or a shared measurement method. The aim...

An increasing amount of empirical evidence documents that city-size distribution within a country follows a power law, often in the form of Zipf’s law. This paper provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution across OECD countries. It uses a database where urban agglomerations...