Chapter 48 Micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies

Are Gatekeepers Important for the Renewal of the Local Knowledge Base? Evidence from U. S. Cities

“…8 In order to account for the importance of agglomeration economies (see Duranton and Puga [2004] for a review), it includes two variables. First, the number of internal patents (INTPAT) in the city at time t (i.e., by excluding patents with inventors external to the city) captures both the scale effect associated with the agglomeration of inventive activities at the city level, as suggested by Bettencourt et al (2007) and Lobo and Strumsky (2008), and the potential for technological recombination.…”

Urban Governance Structure and Wage Disparities across US Metropolitan Areas

“…A high density of firms and workers generates increasing returns to scale at the local level because of the emergence of a number of positive externalities. For example, Duranton and Puga (2004) cited the matching between employers and employee, the learning spillovers and the sharing of infrastructures as well as of facilities. On the latter, Burchfield et al (2006) found that cities with shared public facilities for the provision of water are more populous than those in which cities aquifers make individual household wells viable.…”

“…Wage disparities are extensively documented in Moretti (2011) who argues that the difference between the 10th and the 90th percentile of the wage distribution for average high school graduates account for approximately 32%. The literature has identified a number of explanations by referring to agglomeration economies (Marshall, 1890;Duranton and Puga, 2004), locational fundamentals such as amenities (Ellison and Glaeser, 1999) and workforce skill composition (Glaeser and Resseger, 2010). Despite being often assumed as an important driver of local economic performance (Storper, 2010), the role of institutions in enhancing agglomeration benefits has tended to be overlooked by the literature.…”

Local Industrial Structures and Female Entrepreneurship in India

“…We develop metrics that unite the incumbent industrial structures of cities with the extent to which industries interact through the traditional agglomeration rationales first defined by Marshall (1920). Duranton and Puga (2004) and Rosenthal and Strange (2004) review the subsequent literature in detail. Prior work emphasizes the importance of these conditions for explaining overall entry rates, 12 but this work does not explore the impact of favorable local conditions on the gender balance of entrepreneurs.…”