Industry diversity, competition and firm relatedness: the impact on employment before and after the 2008 global financial crisis

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which indicators of external scale economies impacted employment growth in Canada over the period 2004-2011. We focus on knowledge spillovers between firms while accounting for Marshallian specialization, Jacobs' diversity, and competition by industry, as well as related and unrelated firm varieties in terms of employment and sales. We find that the employment growth effects of local competition and diversity are positive, while the effect of Marshallian specialization is negative. Diversification is found to be particularly important for employment growth during the Global Financial Crisis and immediately thereafter.

Spatial Distribution Pattern of the Headquarters of Listed Firms in China

“…Starting a new business, establishing headquarters, and opening joint ventures, branches, and subsidiaries contribute to expansions in regional employment, provide earning opportunities, and promote local economic growth [2,3]. In general, a very small number of large firms account for most of the economic output and are crucial to the development of the regional economy [4].…”

Smart Specialisation strategies on the periphery: a data-triangulation approach to governance issues and practices

“…This apparent lack of effective regional governance is striking in the face of the overall strength of institutions in Finland. We could thus expect that weak endowment and capacity of relevant institutions (Karo & Kattel, 2015;Wang et al, 2017) are less important for impeding effective S3 implementation compared with a lack of cooperation capacity among regional stakeholders (Huggins & Prokop, 2017;Rodríguez-Pose et al, 2014). Sörvik et al (2019) suggest that the institutional thinness of peripheral sparsely populated areas (SPA) raises the importance of multilevel governance issues related to alignment and coordination of programmes and strategies.…”

Mobility, housing and labour markets in times of economic crises

“…There is a wide range of factors influencing labour mobility, including: (1) economic issues, such as the general economic context and business cycle (Alamá-Sabater, Alguacil, & Bernat-Martí, 2017;Plane, 1993) and transaction costs/mortgages versus commuting costs (Reuschke & Maclennan, 2014;van Ewijk & Leuvensteijn, 2009); (2) the institutional framework, for example, foreign resident legislation (Domínguez-Mújica, Guerra-Talavera, & Parreño-Castellano, 2014); (3) the internal structure and segmentation of the labour market, for example, company size and industry diversity (Wang, Madsen, & Steiner, 2017;Withers & Clark, 2006); (4) population density (Skeldon, 1997), degree of urbanization (Van Mol, 2016) and geographical distance between markets (Haas & Osland, 2014); (5) the housing market in terms of the accessibility and affordability (supply and prices) of housing (Coulson & Fisher, 2002;Helderman, Mulder, & Van Ham, 2004); (6) housing tenure (Bergy, 2010); and (7) the socioeconomic background of individuals, and psychological and emotional factors (Mertens & Haas, 2005;Staniscia & Benassi, 2018).…”

“…For instance, it has been concluded that European Union countries with less flexible labour markets performed relatively better during the last economic crisis, since they were able to maintain stable employment levels, in contrast to those with very flexible labour markets (Leschke, 2013;Tridico, 2013). Also, diversification in industry was found to be of particular importance for employment growth during and after a financial crisis (Wang et al, 2017). In other cases, recessions have been considered to improve productivity, since the least productive firms tend to close, preserving the most efficient ones, consequently leading to changes in regional disparities (Kangasharju & Pekkala, 2004, p. 257).…”