This article investigates the incidence of agglomeration externalities in Ecuador, a small‐sized, middle‐income developing country. In particular, we analyze the role of the informal sector within these relations, since informal employment accounts for a significant part of total employment in the developing countries. Using individual level data and instrumental variable techniques, we investigate the impact of spatial externalities, in terms of population density, local specialization and urban size, on the wages of workers in Ecuadorian cities. The results show that spatial externalities matter also for a small developing country. Moreover, analysis of the interaction between spatial externalities and informality shows that, on average, workers employed in the informal sector do not enjoy significant benefits from agglomeration externalities. Finally, by investigating the possible channels behind spatial agglomeration gains we show that the advantages from agglomeration for formal sector workers may well be accounted for by better job‐quality matches and, to a lesser extent, by learning externalities. For informal sector workers, our findings also suggest possible gains from job changes, which offset a penalty for remaining employed in the same occupation.

No abstract

Identifying integrated urban areas is an important issue for urban analysis and policy evaluation. In this paper, we extend the OECD's methodology to identify Functional Urban Areas to countries where there is not commuting data. We do so substituting such socioeconomic flows by available information on road structure, which allow us to work with accessibility based on travel time. The main advantage of our procedure is its applicability to most countries in the world, as it only uses GIS data. In this paper we apply the procedure two border countries: Colombia, which has a recent census with commuting data, to calibrate our approach, and Ecuador, where there is not commuting census. We perform several sensitivity analysis and robustness checks to Ecuador with alternative sources of socioeconomic flows.

This research reports the effects of Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak on expected tourism revenues for preservation in the Galapagos Islands, a well-known international tourism destination. We explore the trends and construct a seasonal index to estimate the expected number of visitors in the Galapagos National Park (GNP) as well as the potential revenue from the fee entrance in the park, which is used for preservation activities. Our results indicate that in our optimistic scenario, losses would account for half of the revenues in 2020,having a high impact on the Galapagos National Park preservation activities. Based on our results, we recommend GNP and Ecuadorian authorities to look for alternative sources of funding, so conservation programs in the park can continue with no interruption.