The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) refers to the sensitivity of statistical research results to the initial spatial nomenclature used. Despite a substantial literature in the related field of geography on the potential influence of the MAUP, the urban economic modeling tradition has not paid much attention to this issue. In this article, we test to what extent the MAUP moderates the effect of agglomeration externalities on areal sectoral employment growth by varying the initial geographical scale of analysis. Using spatial cross-regressive modeling in which we account for spatial spillover effects of agglomeration externalities, we find different effects of agglomeration forces across geographical scales. As the MAUP is a theoretical as well as a methodological problem, research should not only work with proper statistical specifications of spatial agglomeration models incorporating different geographical scales, but also relate this more explicitly to hypotheses concerning the geographical scale at which agglomeration externalities operate.
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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. in its series Research Paper with number
ERS-2008-076-ORG Revision_Date: 2009-07-29.