Urban specialization in the internet age: Empirical findings for Germany

Franz-Josef Bade, Claus-Friedrich Laaser and Rüdiger Soltwedel

No 1215, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: Declining spatial transaction costs will affect patterns of urban specialization. The underlying hypothesis is that production locations of goods and services which require face-to-face contacts will continue to be concentrated in core cities of large agglomerations even in the Internet age while locations of standardized production activities with a high codified information content will spread to more peripheral locations. The paper provides empirical evidence on changes in employment specialization patterns of nine different types of German districts (ranging from core cities of agglomerations to low density rural districts) for the period 1976 to 2002. Obviously there is an increasing concentration of "white collar" employees relative to "blue collar" workers in core cities which even gains momentum in particular in the second half of the 1990s.

Keywords: Spatial Division of Labor; E-commerce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 O33 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1215

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