According to the ‘convergence hypothesis’, multinational companies will tend to displace national firms and trade as total market size increases and as countries converge in relative size, factor endowments, and production costs. Using a recent model developed by Markusen and Venables (1998)...

According to the 'convergence hypothesis' multinational companies will tend to displace national firms and trade as total market size increases and as countries converge in relative size, factor endowments, and production costs. Using a recent model developed by Markusen and Venables (1998) as a...

It has recently been shown that the firm size distribution is initially skewed to the right and then evolves over time to become more lognormal, and argued that this is likely due to firms initially facing financial constraints, see Cabral and Mata(2003). We conjecture that, if this is true,...

This paper analyses and compares the dynamics of agglomeration in Portuguese and Irish manufacturing industries between 1985 and 1998 implementing Dumais, Ellison and Glaeser (2002)'s methodology. Using comparable and exhaustive micro-level data sets, we find that industries tend to be subject...

We investigate and compare the spatial distribution of manufacturing activity and its determinants in Belgium, Ireland, and Portugal using comparable, exhaustive micro-level data sets. We find some similarities between Portugal and Belgium, but little for Ireland. Moreover, there is some...

Factual evidence suggests that ICT-led growth and ICT-producing sectors are strongly localised geographically. Given that the nature of ongoing technological change and innovation dynamics has a strong local/regional component, public policies need to be designed at this level as well. However,...

The present study provides estimates of the Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs) for a sample of 17 OECD countries and 11 manufacturing sectors in a single framework encompassing capital, labour and energy taxes. Our cross-country/cross-sector approach allows us comparing the incentives provided...