Trade Costs, Market Access and Economic Geography: Why the Empirical Specification of Trade Costs Matters

Trade costs are a crucial in new economic geography (NEG) models. The unavailability of actual trade costs data requires the approximation of trade costs. Most NEG studies do not deal with the ramifications of the particular trade costs specification used. This paper shows that the specification of trade costs matters. Estimations of a NEG wage equation for a sample of 80 countries show how the relevance of the key NEG variable, market access, depends upon the trade costs specification. Our conclusion is that NEG needs to (re-)examine the sensitivity of its empirical findings to the handling of trade costs.

The Relevance of Amenities and Agglomeration for Dutch Housing Prices

Dutch cities which combine a favourable location in terms of distance to work with a variety of urban amenities appear to be the most attractive locations for people to live. Relatively safe cities, offering a variety of history and culture events, as well as good restaurants have significantly higher housing prices. In addition, successful cities are places where people can optimize their job prospects, not necessarily only as a result of jobs in these cities, but also because of access to jobs in other Dutch cities.urban amenities, population growth, housing prices

Economic Geography and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The physical or absolute geography of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is often blamed for its poor economic performance. A country’s location however not only determines its absolute geography, it also pins down its relative position on the globe vis-à-vis other countries. This paper assesses the importance of relative geography, and access to foreign markets in particular, in explaining the substantial income differences between SSA countries. We base our empirical analysis on a new economic geography model. We first construct a measure of each SSA country’s market access based on bilateral trade flows and then assess the relevance of market access for economic development. In doing so, we explicitly distinguish between the importance of access to other SSA markets and to the rest of world respectively. We find that market access, and notably intra-SSA market access, has a significant positive effect on GDP per capita. This indicates that improving SSA market access (e.g. by investing in intra- SSA infrastructure or through increased SSA integration) will have substantial positive effects on its future economic development.Sub Saharan Africa, economic development, economic geography, market access

FDI and the Relevance of Spatial Linkages: Do third Country Effects Matter for Dutch FDI?

The aim of this paper is to test for the relevance of spatial linkages for Dutch (outbound) FDI. To do so, and based on recent FDI theories, we estimate a spatial lag model to assess the importance of spatial linkages for Dutch FDI to 18 host countries. As a determinant of FDI, space or geography also enters our empirical analysis through the market size and a corporate income tax variable. Our paper is among the few to date to take spatial linkages with respect to FDI into account. The Dutch case is also interesting because Dutch firms account for a large part of global FDI and related research has so far focused mainly on US FDI. After controlling for fixed effects, we find for our sample period 1984-2004 that third country effects matter, but the results are somewhat sensitive to sample and model selection. Apart from our benchmark spatial lag model, we discuss and estimate various alternative models notably by looking at European host FDI countries only, by dividing FDI into industry and services FDI and by estimating a spatial error model as well.

The Relevance of Amenities and Agglomeration for Dutch Housing Prices

In this paper we have combined concepts from the field of urban economics with views from the area of geographic economics (the New Economic Geography). This approach enabled us to depict both the significance of the characteristics of the city itself and that of its location. Cities which combine a favourable location in terms of distance to work with a variety of urban amenities appear to be the most attractive locations for people to live. These are relatively safe cities, offering a variety of history and culture events, as well as good restaurants. In addition, successful cities are places where people can optimize their career prospects, not necessarily – as often assumed – as a result of business districts in these cities, but access to jobs from these cities.

Top management team and board attributes and firm performance in the Netherlands

We survey the evidence on the relationship between board and top management team attributes and firm performance in the Netherlands (sample of 94 listed firms). To this aim we develop hypotheses by using sources from the strategic management and the corporate governance literature. Dutch corporations generally have a two-tier board system. We use the size of the top management team (TMT) and their average age as well as the size of the supervisory board (RVC) and the percentage of outside members as attributes of corporate performance. Our base model consists of two performance indicators: a composite financial accounting measure (of ROA, ROS, and ROE) and a market- based indicator (standardized stock prize increase). Control variables are: log of total assets as an indicator of the size of a firm, leverage and adjusted cash flow/total assets as indicators of financial structure, coefficients of variation of sales and ROA as measures of environmental uncertainty (dynamics), and diversification as a measure of risk-spread. In general, we conclude for the year 1996, that by using the base model, direct linear and non-linear relationships between the TMT/board variables and performance are not existent. Also, the interaction effects with environmental dynamics as a moderating variable are tested. From this analysis it becomes evident that, although environmental uncertainty has a clear direct relationship with performance, it has no significance as a moderating variable. Only in one case the interaction with size of the board leads to a significant result. Indicating (instead of the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship) a U-shaped relationship between RVC and performance.

Development of stock markets, societal norms and legal institutions

We explain the development of stock markets by both legal and societal determinants and analyze the relevance of both determinants in the Levine-Zervos (1998) cross-sectional growth regressions. We argue that the legal indicators as developed by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1998) are not covering all the aspects of alternatives to financial contracting as suggested by Levine (2000). The basic argument is that the legal classification of countries does not completely cover the cross-country variation in the societal desire to use contracting in financial transactions. After establishing the determinants of stock market development we analyze the impact of stock market development on economic growth. We use a 2SLS approach to correct for the endogeneity of stock market development. We contradict the positive view of Levine-Zervos on the impact of liquidity of stock markets on economic growth. Our conclusions are in line with Levine (2000) who argues that it is not financial structure but the development of the deep structural legal and societal characteristics that is instrumental to economic growth.

The strategic bombing of German cities during World War II and its impact on city growth

It is a stylized fact that city size distributions are rather stable over time. Explanations for city growth and the resulting city-size distributions fall into two broad groups. On the one hand there are theories that assume city growth to be a random process and this process can result in a stable city-size distribution. On the other hand there are theories that stress that city growth and the city-size distribution are driven by economically relevant differences between locations. These differences might be the result of physical differences or might be caused by location specific increasing returns or externalities. We construct a unique data set to analyze whether or not a large temporary shock had an impact on German city growth and city size distribution. Following recent work by Davis and Weinstein (2001) on Japan, we take the strategic bombing of German cities duringWWII as our example of such a shock. The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of this shock on German city-growth and the resulting citysize distribution. If city-growth follows a random walk this would imply that the war shock had a permanent impact on German city-growth. If, however, as the second group of theories predicts, the random walk hypothesis is not confirmed this would mean that the war shock at most had a temporary effect on the city growth process. Our main finding is that city growth in western Germany did not follow a random walk, while city growth in eastern Germany did follow a random walk. Different post-war economic systems are most likely responsible for this outcome.

The Empirical Relevance of the New Economic Geography: Testing for a Spatial Wage Structure in Germany

In this paper we want to shed some light on the empirical relevance of the new economic geography. Using one of the central features of the core new economic geography models, namely that wages have the tendency to fall the further one moves away from centres of economic activity, we investigate the existence of a spatial wage structure for post-unification Germany. We find support for a spatial wage structure for German city-district wages, and hence indirectly for the relevance of a new economic geography model for Germany. We also find that demand linkages in Germany are strongly localised and that the “old” border still matters to the extent that economic interactions between western and eastern Germany are still limited compared to the situation within these two parts of Germany.New economic geography, spatial wage structure, Germany

Top management team and board attributes and firm performance in the Netherlands

We survey the evidence on the relationship between board and top management team attributes and firm performance in the Netherlands (sample of 94 listed firms). To this aim we develop hypotheses by using sources from the strategic management and the corporate governance literature. Dutch corporations generally have a two-tier board system. We use the size of the top management team (TMT) and their average age as well as the size of the supervisory board (RVC) and the percentage of outside members as attributes of corporate performance. Our base model consists of two performance indicators: a composite financial accounting measure (of ROA, ROS, and ROE) and a market- based indicator (standardized stock prize increase). Control variables are: log of total assets as an indicator of the size of a firm, leverage and adjusted cash flow/total assets as indicators of financial structure, coefficients of variation of sales and ROA as measures of environmental uncertainty (dynamics), and diversification as a measure of risk-spread. In general, we conclude for the year 1996, that by using the base model, direct linear and non-linear relationships between the TMT/board variables and performance are not existent. Also, the interaction effects with environmental dynamics as a moderating variable are tested. From this analysis it becomes evident that, although environmental uncertainty has a clear direct relationship with performance, it has no significance as a moderating variable. Only in one case the interaction with size of the board leads to a significant result. Indicating (instead of the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship) a U-shaped relationship between RVC and performance.