Miguel C. Manjón Antolín

Firm Size and Geographical Aggregation: An Empirical Appraisal in Industrial Location

This paper assesses empirically the importance of size discrimination and disaggregate data for deciding where to locate a start-up concern. We compare three econometric specifications using Catalan data: a multinomial logit with 4 and 41 alternatives (provinces and comarques, respectively) in which firm size is the main covariate; a conditional logit with 4 and 41 alternatives including attributes of the sites as well as size-site interactions; and a Poisson model on the comarques and the full spatial choice set (942 municipalities) with site-specific variables. Our results suggest that if these two issues are ignored, conclusions may be misleading. We provide evidence that large and small firms behave differently and conclude that Catalan firms tend to choose between comarques rather than between municipalities. Moreover, labour-intensive firms seem more likely to be located in the city of Barcelona.

Export intensity and the productivity gains of exporting

This article analyses whether the productivity gains associated with Learning-by-Exporting (LBE) (controlling for self-selection) depend on the intensity of the firms exporting activity. The results from a representative sample of Spanish manufacturing firms indicate that the yearly average gains in productivity are larger for those firms that increase their export-to-sales ratio.