Spatial Relocation with Heterogeneous Firms and Heterogeneous Sectors

Rikard Forslid and Toshihiro Okubo

No 2010:17, Research Papers in Economics from Stockholm University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The present paper focuses on sorting as a mechanism behind the well-established fact that there is a central region productivity premium. Using a model of heterogeneous firms that can move between regions, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) show how more productive firms sort themselves to the large core region. We extend this model by introducing different capital intensities among firms and sectors. In accordance with empirical evidence, more productive firms are assumed to be more capital intensive. As a result, our model can produce sorting to the large regions from both ends of the productivity distribution. Firms with high capital intensity and high productivity as well as firms with very low productivity and low capital intensity tend to relocate to the core. We use region and sector productivity distributions from Japanese micro data to test the predictions of the model. Several sectors show patterns consistent with two-sided sorting, and roughly an equal number of sectors seem to primarily be driven by sorting and selection. We also find supportive evidence for our model prediction that two-sided sorting occurs in sectors with a high capital intensity.

Keywords: Agglomeration; firm heterogeneity; productivity; spatial sorting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F15 F21 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2010-11-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-geo, nep-int and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www2.ne.su.se/paper/wp10_17.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Spatial Relocation with Heterogeneous Firms and Heterogeneous Sectors (2010)
Working Paper: Spatial Relocation with Heterogeneous Firms and Heterogeneous Sectors (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2010_0017

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