Agglomeration can be caused by asymmetric information and a locational signaling effect: The location choice of workers signals their productivity to potential employers. The cost of a signal is the cost of housing at a location. When workers’ marginal utility of housing is negatively correlated with their productivity, skill-biased technological change causes a core-periphery bifurcation where...

In contrast to what several papers have argued recently, we show that firm heterogeneity fosters agglomeration of economic activity. If firms are more similar with respect to their total factor productivity, each company faces a lower propensity to export. This renders the home market more important speaking against agglomeration. We also relate changes in firm heterogeneity to technological pr...

This paper investigates trends and determinants of the spatial concentration of China’s manufacturing industries using a large firm-level data for the time period of 1998 to 2005. It is found that the overall industrial agglomeration in China has increased steadily in recent years though it is still much lower than those of the well-developed market economies (such as United States, United King...

This paper provides a survey and guide to the literature relevant to urbanization and economic development. The paper starts with some basic facts and trends about urbanization worldwide. It then reviews the traditional twosector urban-rural model, but focuses on the modern version, Krugman’s coreperiphery model. However, two sector models do not capture the notion of an economy composed of man...

The influence of post deposition annealing (PDA) up to temperatures of TPDA=900°C on the morphology and agglomeration behavior of ambient temperature sputter deposited platinum onto anodic aluminum oxide templates is investigated. Both cluster agglomeration and diffusion processes occur on the surface and on the inner channel walls. When the annealing temperature is less than 400°C, particles a...

We examine the impacts of agglomeration economies on the location of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Vietnam. Using a large dataset that provides detailed information about individual firms, we investigate the location choices by 920 newly created foreign firms in 2009 in about 125 different 4-digit industries. The estimates of the conditional logit model show that agglomeration benefits mot...

This study empirically establishes a link between medieval trade, agglomeration and contemporary regional development in ten European countries. It documents a statistically and economically significant positive relationship between prominent involvement in medieval trade and commercial activities and regional economic development today. Further empirical analyses show that medieval trade posit...

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 uncertaintie...

Each user accesses a Web site with certain interests. The interest can be manifested by the sequence of each Web user access. The access paths of all Web users can be clustered. The effectiveness and efficiency are two problems in clustering algorithms. This paper provides a clustering algorithm for personalized Web recommendation. It is path clustering based on competitive agglomeration (PCCA)...