Agglomeration economies with consistent productivity estimates

Philipp Ehrl

No 113, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: This paper investigates the relative impact of microeconomic agglomeration mechanisms on plant’s total factor productivity (TFP) using German establishment and employment level data. Contrasting different strategies to estimate TFP from plant level production functions reveals that not accounting for the endogeneity of input choices and not separating price effects from true productivity leads to underestimated agglomeration economies. Under the preferred TFP measure, labor market pooling, captured by the correlation of the occupational composition between one county-industry and the rest of the county, is found to have the largest impact. Besides, two knowledge spillover mechanisms, transmitted via job changes and public R&D funding, positively affect plant productivity. Except for job changes the result is even robust when the spatial units are broadened from counties to labor market regions. Testing for urbanization and localization economies, I find that TFP is higher in more specialized and larger counties, whereas sectoral diversity is of no importance at the county level.

Keywords: agglomeration economies; modifiable areal unit problem; TFP estimation; price bias; localization; urbanization economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 R11 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2011-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://bgpe.cms.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/files/2023/0 ... tivity-estimates.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Agglomeration economies with consistent productivity estimates (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bav:wpaper:113_ehrl

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