As cities increasingly become centers of economic growth and innovation, there is a need to understand their inner workings and organization in greater detail. We use ge-coded firm-level panel data at the sub-city level to assess the long-standing question whether agglomeration economies derive...

This paper considers the racetrack economic approach, where manufacturing activities are distributed continuously. We seek constant-access equilibria and show that smooth equilibrium distributions are always unstable for almost all transport cost functions, whereas agglomeration in 1 or 2 atomic...

How does export liberalization affect firm location choice and the spatial concentration of economic activity? We address these questions using the geo-coordinates of Chinese manufacturing firms and find that export widens inter-city and intra-city spatial disparities by reinforcing initially...

Agglomeration can affect markups through two potential channels: agglomerated regions toughen competition (price competition effect) and firms are more productive on average in agglomerated regions (agglomeration externalities and firm selection effect). However, the literature is inconclusive...