Regional data on wages for the Spanish Economy show that workers who live in developed regions earn more than workers in other regions. For example, the average wage in Madrid or in Catalonia -two of the most developed regions- is about a 50% higher than in Murcia -a region specialised in agriculture with low levels of per capita income-. New Economic Geography models, such as Krugman (1991), provide a possible explanation of why firms do not move from these regions to others where wages were lower. These kind of models describe how firms concentrate their production in one location due to the existence of increasing returns to scale and low transport costs in the presence of pecuniary external economies. Previous studies for the Spanish Economy use aggregate data to explain why average wages in the same sector are different across regions. The original contribution of this paper consists of using individual data on wages from the Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares -carried out by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica with reference to the years 1990-1991- to detect the existence and the nature of external economies. This information permits to control the influence of individual (gender, age, level of studies) and job (occupation, industry, full or part-time work) characteristics on wages to, first, detect the existence of external economies and, second, test alternative explanations of their presence: for example, the size of the labour market, the accumulation of the same kind of qualified workers or the geographical specialisation in a dominant manufacturing activity.
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 European Regional Science Association in its series ERSA conference papers with number
ersa98p160.
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.:
Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992.
"Growth in Cities,"
Journal of Political Economy,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-52, December.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991.
"Growth in Cities,"
NBER Working Papers
3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Edward L. Glaeser & David C. Mare, 1994.
"Cities and Skills,"
NBER Working Papers
4728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Glaeser, E.L. & Mare, D.C., 1994.
"Cities and Skills,"
Papers
e-94-11, Stanford - Hoover Institution.
Glaeser, Edward L & Mare, David C, 2001.
"Cities and Skills,"
Journal of Labor Economics,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 316-42, April.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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.)