Series/Report no.:
43rd Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "Peripheries, Centres, and Spatial Development in the New Europe", 27th - 30th August 2003, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract:
The connection between accessibility (or "highways" or "infrastructure") and productivity on a regional scale has been a matter of debate since Aschauer (1989). In this paper we use a panel data approach on the micro level, and a fine zonal subdivision in order to capture the effects on individual firms, both in terms of productivity and agglomeration. We study a cost function with a translog specification which we apply on a large unbalanced data set of firms in the Swedish part of the Öresund region: Scania. We use matching estimators for non-parametric tests of spatial dependence (agglomeration) and the accessibility dependence of productivity, thus avoiding sample selection bias. Key words: panel data, cost function, translog, Öresund region, accessibility, matching estimator