Industry Clusters
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- 20 Aug 2019
- Working Paper Summaries
Spatial Agglomeration and Superstar Firms: Firm-level Patterns from Europe and US
Large, productive, or internationalized firms tend to co-locate geographically. This study of the United States and Eurozone shows greater agglomeration around high performance plants, particularly multinationals. For policymakers, then, policies aimed at improving industry performance should pay attention to firm productivity distribution and not only focus on average performance.
- 18 Oct 2017
- Research & Ideas
How Economic Clusters Drive Globalization
Historical research by Valeria Giacomin shows that industrial clusters, often cited in explaining local economic growth, have had a much wider impact, especially in developing countries. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 11 Sep 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
A Historical Approach to Clustering in Emerging Economies
Clusters are geographically concentrated and interlinked agglomerations of specialized firms in a particular domain. This paper argues that long-term studies of clusters in developing countries are necessary to explain the relevance of clusters for the activities of multinational enterprises, making of global business, and building of an integrated marketplace.
- 05 Sep 2017
- Working Paper Summaries
Structural Transformation: A Competitiveness-based View
A critical challenge for many economies is how to accelerate structural change when market forces alone seem insufficient. This paper explores the relationship between two approaches. The Structural Transformation framework argues for identifying and supporting target sectors in line with ‘latent’ competitive advantages. The competitiveness framework emphasizes the need to systematically strengthen competitive advantages, with new sectors the outcome rather than the driver of competitiveness upgrading.
- 29 Aug 2016
- Working Paper Summaries
Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms
Understanding the location interdependence of multinational firms and how they agglomerate with one another is critical to designing and improving economic policies. These authors’ analysis, using a worldwide plant-level dataset and a novel index of agglomeration, yields a number of insights into the economic geography of multinational production. In addition to market access and comparative advantage motives, multinationals' location choices are significantly affected by agglomeration economies including not only vertical production linkages but also technology diffusion and capital-market externalities.
- 07 Dec 2015
- Research & Ideas
Why Immigrant Workers Cluster in Particular Industries
Anyone who lives in an American city can see how immigrants tend to cluster in industries along ethnic lines. Professor William R. Kerr explains why, and what this means for the US economy. Open for comment; 0 Comments.
- 12 Nov 2015
- Working Paper Summaries
Social Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship
This research looks at why entrepreneurs from certain ethnicities cluster in particular industries, such as Vietnamese nail care salons.
Tech Clusters
We are witnessing a major transformation of business to achieve strategic positions in powerful tech hubs, but most workers and consumers will always be far away. The authors describe the spatial concentration of tech activity in the United States and explore the economics of tech clusters with an eye to the future of innovation and economic geography.