Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal

Kaldor's Laws and Spatial Dependence: Evidence for the European Regions

PONS-NOVELL J. and VILADECANS-MARSAL E. (1999) Kaldors laws and spatial dependence: evidence for the European regions, Reg. Studies 33, 443-451. In this paper we provide an outline of Kaldors growth model and test its relevance to the economic experience of European regions during the period 1984-92. Kaldors first law asserts that manufacturing is the engine of economic growth. His second proposition, also known as Verdoorns law, states that there is a strong positive relation between manufacturing productivity growth and manufacturing output growth. Kaldors third law holds that overall productivity growth is positively related to manufacturing output growth, and negatively related to employment in non-manufacturing sectors. The empirical results, corrected for the presence of spatial autocorrelation, indicate that Kaldors second and third laws are compatible with the economic growth of European regions during the period 1984-92. PONS-NOVELL J. et VILADECANS-MARSAL E. (1999) Les lois de Kaldor et la...

What Underlies Localization and Urbanization Economies? Evidence from the Location of New Firms

The objective of this paper is to analyze why firms in some industries locate in specialized economic environments (localization economies) while those in other industries prefer large city locations (urbanization economies). To this end, we examine the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Spain at the city level and for narrowly defined industries (three-digit level). First, we estimate firm location models to obtain estimates that reflect the importance of localization and urbanization economies in each industry. In a second step, we regress these estimates on industry characteristics that are related to the potential importance of three agglomeration theories, namely, labor market pooling, input sharing and knowledge spillovers. Localization effects are low and urbanization effects are high in knowledge-intensive industries, suggesting that firms (partly) locate in large cities to reap the benefits of inter-industry knowledge spillovers. We also find that localization effects are high in industries that employ workers whose skills are more industry-specific, suggesting that industries (partly) locate in specialized economic environments to share a common pool of specialized workers.

Suburbanization and Highways: When the Romans, the Bourbons and the First Cars Still Shape Spanish Cities

We estimate the effects of highways on the suburbanization of Spanish cities. First, we extend previous findings for the US and China by providing evidence for Europe: each additional highway ray built between 1991 and 2006 produced a 5 per cent decline in central city population between 1991 and 2011. Second, our main contribution is at the intrametropolitan level. We find that highway improvements influence the spatial pattern of suburbanization: suburban municipalities that were given improved access to the highway system between 1991 and 2006 grew 4.6% faster. The effect was most marked in suburbs located at 5–11 km from the central city (7.1%), and concentrated near the highways: population spreaded out along the (new) highway segments (4.7%) and ramps (2.7%). To estimate the causal relationship between population growth and highway improvements, we rely on an IV estimation. We use Spain’s historical road networks – Roman roads, 1760 main post roads, and 19th century main roads – to construct our candidates for use as instruments.

Cities and the Internet: The end of distance?

SINCE the mid-1990s, the use of new information and communication technologies (principally via the Internet and e-commerce) has become increasingly widespread in domestic economies. Illustrative of this is the fact that between 2000 and 2002 the proportion of homes connected to the Internet in the European Union rose from 28 percent to 40 percent, while in the case of Spain this proportion rose from 16 percent to 29 percent in the same period. As a result of this technological advance, a whole series of studies were published that predicted that the benefits of these new technologies might reduce the advantages of locating (in the case of firms) or residing (in the case of consumers) in the most heavily urbanized areas. The literature has enumerated countless aspects, related to agglomeration economies that can make living in a big city more attractive. Specifically, one of the advantages that consumers might value most is the access they enjoy to full and diverse commercial offerings that cannot be found in smaller urban centers that do not generate sufficient economies of scale. However, over the last few years, the Internet has widened the market potential for millions of consumers who now have access to products and services that were previously unavailable in their place of residence or in the latter’s area of market influence. In tandem with these advances in the use of these new technologies, over the last few years we have witnessed an

Sequential city growth in the US: does age matter?

We provide empirical evidence of the dynamics of city size distribution for the whole of the twentieth century in U.S. cities and metropolitan areas. We focus our analysis on the new cities that were created during the period of analysis. The main contribution of this paper, therefore, is the parametric and nonparametric analysis of the population growth experienced by these new-born cities. Our results enable us to confirm that, when cities appear, they grow very rapidly and, as the decades pass, their growth slows or even falls into decline. This is consistent with the theoretical framework regarding mean reversion (convergence) in the steady state and with the theories of sequential city growth.

How Does Transportation Shape Intrametropolitan Growth? An Answer from the Regional Express Rail

This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and control for all other transportation modes that could be complement or substitute to the RER. A dynamic analysis accounting for spatial heterogeneity reveals that for municipalities located less than 13 kilometers from an RER station, each kilometer closer to the station increases employment and population growth by 12% and 8% respectively. Regarding the time pattern of these effects, we find no impact of the RER expansion on employment growth during the first part of the period, while the effect on population growth appears earlier but declines over time.

Market potential and city growth: Spain 1860-1960

A few attempts have been made to analyse whether market potential might also have an impact on urban structures. In this paper we employ parametric and non-parametric techniques to analyse the effect of market potential on the growth of Spanish cities during the period 1860-1960. This period is especially interesting because it is characterized by the advance in the economic integration of the national market together with an intense process of industrialization. Our results show a clear positive influence of market potential on city growth.

Big plant closures and agglomeration economies

This paper analyses the effects of large manufacturing plant closures on local employment. Specifically, we estimate the net employment effects of the closure of 45 large manufacturing plants in Spain, which relocated abroad between 2001 and 2006. We run differences-in-differences specifications in which locations that experience a closure are matched to locations with similar pre-treatment employment levels and trends. The results show that when a plant closes, for each job directly lost in the plant closure, between 0.3 and 0.6 jobs are actually lost in the local economy. The adjustment is concentrated in incumbent firms in the industry that suffered the closure, providing indirect evidence of labor market pooling effects. We find no employment effects in the rest of manufacturing industries or in the services sectors. These findings suggest that traditional input-output analyses tend to overstate the net employment losses of large plant closures.

Do Land Use Policies Follow Road Construction

We study whether local land use policies are modified in response to enhanced demand for building generated by a new highway, and examine the extent to which this effect of land use regulations affects building activity. We focus on the case of Spain during the last housing boom (1995-2007). We assembled a new database with information about new highway segments and the modification of the land zoning status in nearby municipalities. The empirical strategy compares the variation in the amount of developable land before-after the construction of the highway in treated municipalities and in control municipalities with similar pre-treatment traits. Our results show that, following the construction of a highway, municipalities converted a huge amount of land from rural to urban uses. We also show that new highways have an impact on building activity.

Housing booms and busts and local fiscal policy

This paper examines how local governments adjust their spending, savings and taxes in response to a temporary revenue windfall generated by a housing boom and how they cope with the inevitable shortfall that appears during the bust. We focus on Spanish local governments given the intensity of the last housing boom-bust experienced there and the large share of construction-related revenues they obtain. We find, first, that just a small share of the boom windfall was saved, with revenues being used primarily to increase spending (above all, current spending) and (to a lesser extent) cut taxes. Second, we find that the failure to save during the boom is higher in places with less informed voters and more contested elections. Third, we also examine what happens during the bust, and find that these governments had to cut abruptly their spending (above all, capital), raise taxes, and allow deficits to grow. Finally, in places wit less informed voters and more contested elections local governments had more trouble in adjusting during the bust, and they tend to rely more on spending cuts than on tax increases.