An important element of the cost of distance is time taken in delivering final and intermediate goods. We argue that time costs are qualitatively different from direct monetary costs such as freight charges. The difference arises because of uncertainty. Unsynchronised deliveries can disrupt production, and delivery time can force producers to order components before demand and cost uncertainties are resolved. Using several related models we show that this generates hitherto unexplored incentives for clustering. If final assembly takes place in two locations and component production has increasing returns to scale, then component production will tend to cluster around just one of the assembly plants.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10404.
Length: Date of creation: Apr 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10404
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References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Hummels, David, 2001.
"Time as a Trade Barrier,"
GTAP Working Papers
1152, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University.
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