This paper considers the empirical literature on the nature and sources of urban increasing returns, also known as agglomeration economies. An important aspect of these externalities that has not been previously emphasized is that the effects of agglomeration extend over at least three different dimensions. These are the industrial, geographic, and temporal scope of economic agglomeration economies. In each case, the literature suggests that agglomeration economies attenuate with distance. Recently, the literature has also begun to provide evidence on the microfoundations of external economies of scale. The best known of these sources are those attributed to Marshall (1920): labor market pooling, input sharing, and knowledge spillovers. Evidence to date supports the presence of all three of these forces. In addition, there is also evidence that natural advantage, home market effects, consumption opportunities, and rent-seeking all contribute to agglomeration.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF This chapter was published in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.) Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, , chapter 49, pages 2119-2171, 2004.
Find related papers by JEL classification: R1 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.