The fraction of persons holding a college degree differs nearly two-fold across U.S. states. This paper documents data related to state educational attainment differences and explores possible explanations. It shows that highly educated states employ skillbiased technologies, specialize in skill-intensive industries, but do not pay lower skill premia than do less educated states. Moreover, meas...

This paper identifies the main sources of urban increasing returns, after Marshall. The geographical distance across which externalities flow is also examined. We bring to bear on these questions plant-level data organized in the form of a panel across the years 1989 and 1999. Plant-level production functions are estimated across the Canadian manufacturing sector as a whole and for five broad i...

We show that temporary place-based subsidies generate persistent effects on economic density. As our design allows us to control for agglomeration economies, we attribute an important role to policy-induced locational advantage (e.g. capital structures) in explaining persistent spatial patterns of economic activity. With regard to distributional implications, we show that subsidies have capital...

In this article, we explore the issue of industrial agglomeration and its relationship to economic development and growth in the less-developed countries of East Asia. We present theoretical arguments and secondary empirical evidence as to why we should have strong expectations about finding a positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance. We also review evidence from the...

a r t i c l e i n f o If localization economies are present, firms within denser industry concentrations should exhibit higher levels of performance than more isolated firms. Nevertheless, research in industrial organization that has fo-cused on the influences on firm survival has largely ignored the potential effects from agglomeration. Recent studies in urban and regional economics suggest th...