Diversity and specialisation in cities: Why, where and when does it matter?

Gilles Duranton and Diego Puga

Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics

Abstract: Why are some cities specialised and others diversified? What are the advantages and disadvantages of urban specialisation and diversity? To what extent does the structure of cities, and the activities of firms and people in them, change over time? How does the sectoral composition of cities influence their evolution? To answer these and related questions, we first distil some key stylised facts from the empirical literature on cities and the composition of their activities. We then turn to a review of different theories looking at such issues, and study the extent to which these theories contribute to the understanding of the empirical regularities.

Keywords: cities; diversity; specialisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 O31 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 1999-07-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-evo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/divvsspz.pdf Main Text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When Does it Matter? (2000)
Working Paper: Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When does it Matter? (1999)
Working Paper: Diversity and Specialization in Cities: Why, Where and When Does It Matter? (1999)
Working Paper: Diversity and specialisation in cities: why, where and when does it matter? (1999)
Working Paper: DIVERSITY AND SPECIALISATION IN CITIES. Why, where and when does it matter?
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tor:tecipa:dpuga-99-02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Toronto, Department of Economics 150 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RePEc Maintainer ().