Economies Of Agglomeration

When firms and people are located near each other in cities and in industrial clusters, they benefit in various ways, including by reducing the costs of exchanging goods and ideas. One might assume that these benefits would become less important as transportation and communication costs fall. Paradoxically, however, cities have become increasingly important, and even within cities industrial clusters remain vital. Agglomeration Economics brings together a group of essays that examine the reasons why economic activity continues to cluster together despite the falling costs of moving goods and transmitting information. The studies cover a wide range of topics and approach the economics of agglomeration from different angles. Together they advance our understanding of agglomeration and its implications for a globalized world.

This book provides the first unifying treatment of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households. Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs. Although referring to agglomeration as a generic term is convenient, it should be noted that the concept of economic agglomeration refers to distinct real world situations. The main focus of the treatment is on cities, but it also explores the formation of agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions. The book is rooted within the realm of modern economics and borrows concepts from geography and regional science, which makes it accessible to a broad audience formed by economists, geographers, regional planners, and other scientists. It may be used in coursework for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates.

Rising densities of human settlements, migration and transport to reduce distances to market, and specialization and trade facilitated by fewer international divisions are central to economic development. The transformations along these three dimensions density, distance, and division are most noticeable in North America, Western Europe, and Japan, but countries in Asia and Eastern Europe are changing in ways similar in scope and speed. 'World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography' concludes that these spatial transformations are essential, and should be encouraged. The conclusion is not without controversy. Slum-dwellers now number a billion, but the rush to cities continues. Globalization is believed to benefit many, but not the billion people living in lagging areas of developing nations. High poverty and mortality persist among the world's 'bottom billion', while others grow wealthier and live longer lives. Concern for these three billion often comes with the prescription that growth must be made spatially balanced. The WDR has a different message: economic growth is seldom balanced, and efforts to spread it out prematurely will jeopardize progress. The Report: documents how production becomes more concentrated spatially as economies grow. proposes economic integration as the principle for promoting successful spatial transformations. revisits the debates on urbanization, territorial development, and regional integration and shows how today's developers can reshape economic geography.

Urban Agglomeration and Economic Growth is the fifth volume in the series of books emanating from the activities of the Egon-Sohmen-Foundation. It contains 10 papers (plus a supplementary note) which were presented at an international conference in Zurich, Switzerland, in summer 1993. These papers cover historical and theoretical aspects as well as policy implications. The volume contains contributions by M. Beckmann, H.-J. Ewers, R.H. Funck, M. van Geenhuizen and P. Nijkamp, G. Giuliano and K.A. Small, P. Hall, H. Klodt, J. Mokyr, H.W. Richardson and J.G. Williamson.

The new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics: Cities and Geography reviews, synthesizes and extends the key developments in urban and regional economics and their strong connection to other recent developments in modern economics. Of particular interest is the development of the new economic geography and its incorporation along with innovations in industrial organization, endogenous growth, network theory and applied econometrics into urban and regional economics. The chapters cover theoretical developments concerning the forces of agglomeration, the nature of neighborhoods and human capital externalities, the foundations of systems of cities, the development of local political institutions, regional agglomerations and regional growth. Such massive progress in understanding the theory behind urban and regional phenomenon is consistent with on-going progress in the field since the late 1960’s. What is unprecedented are the developments on the empirical side: the development of a wide body of knowledge concerning the nature of urban externalities, city size distributions, urban sprawl, urban and regional trade, and regional convergence, as well as a body of knowledge on specific regions of the world—Europe, Asia and North America, both current and historical. The Handbook is a key reference piece for anyone wishing to understand the developments in the field.

"This inspiring collection compiles the most essential papers encompassing agglomeration economies. Agglomeration economies are manifested in cities and industry clusters shaping the neighborhoods and the regions that contain them. The literature is unified around several themes: Improvements in econometric methods and data, geographic scales at which agglomeration economies operate, micro-neighborhoods and mega-regions. The volume also uncovers the forces driving the field including labor markets, input markets and dynamic phenomena such as innovation, technology change and growth. Prefaced by an original introduction from the editor, this collection promises to be a useful tool for scholars as well as a fascinating read to those interested in the subject area"--

This book contains the complete text of the special Golden Anniversary issue of the flagship journal of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), Papers in Regional Science (Volume 83, Number 1), as well as the full text of Walter Isard's Presidential Address "The future (near and far) of regional science". Professor Isard originally delivered the speech in a special plenary session of the fiftieth North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International. The session began with a ceremonial kickoff to the year-long celebration of the multidisciplinary field's first 50 years. At the ceremony, held on the morning of Friday, November 21,2004 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Philadelphia, we presented Walter Isard, the founder of our multidisciplinary field, as well as Antoine Bailly, the President of the Regional Science Association International, and David Boyce, the Association's Archivist, with commemorative first copies of the anniversary issue. This book, entitled Fifty Years of Regional Science, consists of a compendium of "thought" papers authored by a representative sampling of some of the field's leading scholars. For the special journal issue we originally titled the collection: "The Brightest of Dawns".

August 2001 The benefits to Indian manufacturing firms of locating in dense urban areas do not appear to offset the associated costs. Improving the quality and availability of transport infrastructure linking smaller urban areas to the rest of the interregional network would improve manufacturing plants' access to markets and would give standardized manufacturing activities a chance to move out of large, costly urban centers to lower cost secondary centers. "New" economic geography theory and the development of innovative methods of analysis have renewed interest in the location and spatial concentration of economic activities. Lall, Shalizi, and Deichmann examine the extent to which agglomeration economies contribute to economic productivity. They distinguish three sources of agglomeration economies: * At the firm level, from improved access to market centers. * At the industry level, from enhanced intra-industry linkages. * At the regional level, from inter-industry urbanization economies. The input demand framework they use in analysis permits the production function to be estimated jointly with a set of cost shares and makes allowances for nonconstant returns to scale and for agglomeration economies to be factor-augmenting. They use firm-level data for standardized manufacturing in India, together with spatially detailed physio-geographic information that considers the availability and quality of transport networks linking urban centers--thereby accounting for heterogeneity in the density of transport networks between different parts of the country. The sources and magnitudes of agglomeration vary considerably between industrial sectors. Their results indicate that access to markets through improvements in interregional infrastructure is an important determinant of firm-level productivity, whereas the benefits of locating in dense urban areas do not appear to offset the associated costs. Improving the quality and availability of transport infrastructure linking smaller urban areas to the rest of the interregional network would improve market access for manufacturing plants. It would also give standardized manufacturing activities a chance to move out of large, costly urban centers to lower cost secondary centers. This paper--a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the role of economic geography and urbanization in the development process. The authors may be contacted at [email protected], zshalizi @worldbank.org, or [email protected].