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Papers written by Author(s): 'Glenn Ellison'

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  • Working Paper

    What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns

    April 2007

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-07-13

    Many industries are geographically concentrated. Many mechanisms that could account for such agglomeration have been proposed. We note that these theories make different predictions about which pairs of industries should be coagglomerated. We discuss the measurement of coagglomeration and use data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database from 1972 to 1997 to compute pairwise coagglomeration measurements for U.S. manufacturing industries. Industry attributes are used to construct measures of the relevance of each of Marshall's three theories of industry agglomeration to each industry pair: (1) agglomeration saves transport costs by proximity to input suppliers or final consumers, (2) agglomeration allows for labor market pooling, and (3) agglomeration facilitates intellectual spillovers. We assess the importance of the theories via regressions of coagglomeration indices on these measures. Data on characteristics of corresponding industries in the United Kingdom are used as instruments. We find evidence to support each mechanism. Our results suggest that input-output dependencies are the most important factor, followed by labor pooling.
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  • Working Paper

    Geographic Concentration as a Dynamic Process

    March 1998

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-98-03

    This degree of geographic concentration of individual manufacturing industries in the U.S. has declined only slightly in the last twenty years. At the same time, new plant births, plant expansions, contractions and closures have shifted large quantities of employment across plants, firms and locations. This paper uses data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database to examine how relatively stable levels of geographic concentration emerge from this dynamic process. While industries agglomeration levels tend to remain fairly constant we find that there is a greater variation in the locations of these agglomerations. We then decompose aggregate concentration changes into portions attributable to plant births, expansions, contractions, and closures, and find that the location choices of new firms and differences in growth rates have played the most significant role in reducing levels of geographic concentration, while plant closures have tended to reinforce agglomeration. Finally, we look at coagglomeration patterns to test three of Marshall's theories of industry agglomeration: (1) agglomeration saves transport costs by proximity to input suppliers or final consumers, (2) agglomeration allows for labor market pooling, and (3) agglomeration facilitates intellectual spillovers. While there is some truth behind all three theories, we find that industrial location is far more driven by labor mix than by any of the other explanatory variables.
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