We investigate firms’ incentives to locate in the same region to gain access to a large pool of skilled labor. Firms engage in risky R&D activities and thus create stochastic product and implied labor demand. Agglomeration in a cluster is more likely in situations where the innovation step is large and the probability for a firm to be the only innovator is high. When firms cluster, they tend to invest more and take more risk in R&D compared to spatially dispersed firms. Agglomeration is welfare maximizing, because expected labor productivity is higher and firms choose a more efficient, technically diversified portfolio of R&D projects at the industry level.
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Paper provided by University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics in its series CIE Discussion Papers with number
2005-01.
Heiko Gerlach & Thomas Rønde & Konrad O. Stahl, 2005.
"Labor Pooling in R&D Intensive Industries,"
Discussion Papers
64, SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets O32 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
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