IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Deciphering the effects of agglomeration economies on firms' productive efficiency

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Dimitris Skuras

    ()

  • Kostas Tsekouras
  • Efthalia Dimara

Abstract

The present work assess the effects of MAR and Jacob's type agglomeration economies on a sample of firms in the machineries and textiles industries in Greece for the periods 1989-91 and 1999-01. The analysis employs a stochastic production frontier function and allows agglomeration economies to enter as inputs and/or as factors reducing inefficiency. Results re-confirm that the effects of agglomeration economies are industry specific. In our study, the machineries industry benefits from MAR type agglomeration economies and the textiles industry benefits from Jacob's type agglomeration economies. Agglomeration economies may exercise a twin effect on firms' productive efficiency. First, as in the case of the machineries industry in our study, MAR agglomeration economies may act as a new input and affect the kernel of the production frontier. Second, agglomeration economies may act as a factor reducing technical inefficiency with non-neutral effects with labour and capital as in the case of both the machineries and the textiles industries in our study. Finally, it is indicated that agglomeration economies establish a type of "path dependence" for firms. Firms that make significant use of agglomeration economies survive to the next period at higher percentages in comparison to other firms in the same industry. At the same time, entrants are favoured by MAR type agglomeration economies while incumbents are favoured by Jacob's type agglomeration economies.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.

File URL: http://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa11/e110830aFinal00696.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by European Regional Science Association in its series ERSA conference papers with number ersa11p696.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2011
Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p696
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria

Web page: http://www.ersa.org

Keywords:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:

as
in new window


  1. Moomaw, Ronald L., 1983. "Is population scale a worthless surrogate for business agglomeration economies?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 525-545, November.
  2. Martin, Philippe & Mayer, Thierry & Mayneris, Florian, 2011. "Spatial concentration and plant-level productivity in France," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 182-195, March.
  3. Philippe Gagnepain & Marc Ivaldi, 2002. "Incentive Regulatory Policies: The Case of Public Transit Systems in France," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(4), pages 605-629, Winter.
  4. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon & Sébastien Roux, 2010. "Estimating Agglomeration Economies with History, Geology, and Worker Effects," NBER Chapters,in: Agglomeration Economics, pages 15-66 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. A. Rodriguez-Pose & Riccardo Crescenzi, 2006. "R&D, spillovers, innovatoin systems and the genesis of regional growth in Europe," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0067, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
  6. Rosina Moreno & Raffaele Paci & Stefano Usai, 2005. "Spatial Spillovers and Innovation Activity in European Regions," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(10), pages 1793-1812, October.
  7. Daan P. van Soest & Shelby Gerking & Frank G. van Oort, 2006. "Spatial Impacts Of Agglomeration Externalities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 881-899.
  8. Ragnar Tveteras & George E. Battese, 2006. "Agglomeration Externalities, Productivity, And Technical Inefficiency," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 605-625.
  9. Riccardo Crescenzi & Andrés Rodriguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2007. "The territorial dynamics of innovation: a Europe-United States comparative analysis," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(6), pages 673-709, November.
  10. Anselin, Luc & Varga, Attila & Acs, Zoltan, 1997. "Local Geographic Spillovers between University Research and High Technology Innovations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 422-448, November.
  11. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
  12. 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 1126-1152, December.
    • 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.
    • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Kallal, Hedi D. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Scholarly Articles 3451309, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  13. Leo Sveikauskas, 1975. "The Productivity of Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 393-413.
  14. Ivaldi, Marc & Monier-Dilhan, Sylvette & Simioni, Michel, 1995. "Stochastic production frontiers and panel data: A latent variable framework," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 534-547, February.
  15. Jung Won Sonn & Michael Storper, 2008. "The increasing importance of geographical proximity in knowledge production: an analysis of US patent citations, 1975 – 1997," Environment and Planning A, Pion Ltd, London, vol. 40(5), pages 1020-1039, May.
  16. Henderson, J. Vernon, 1986. "Efficiency of resource usage and city size," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 47-70, January.
  17. Mitra, Arup, 1999. "Agglomeration Economies as Manifested in Technical Efficiency at the Firm Level," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 490-500, May.
  18. Cornwell, Christopher & Schmidt, Peter & Sickles, Robin C., 1990. "Production frontiers with cross-sectional and time-series variation in efficiency levels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 185-200.
  19. Cohen, Jeffrey P. & Paul, Catherine J. Morrison, 2005. "Agglomeration economies and industry location decisions: the impacts of spatial and industrial spillovers," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 215-237, May.
  20. Attila Varga, 1998. "Local academic knowledge spillovers and the concentration of economic activity," ERSA conference papers ersa98p493, European Regional Science Association.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

The CitEc project has not yet found citations to this item.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p696. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Gunther Maier)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.