Series/Report no.:
51st Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "New Challenges for European Regions and Urban Areas in a Globalised World", 30 August - 3 September 2011, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract:
We compute aggregate productivity of three categories of regions, classified by level of urbanization in the Netherlands, from firm-specific total factor productivity (TFP) measures. TFP measures are estimated by a semi-parametric algorithm, within 2-digit industries, covering agriculture, manufacturing, construction, trade and services, using AMADEUS data over the period 1997-2006. We analyse the productivity differentials across urbanization categories by decomposing them into industry productivity effect and industry composition effect. Our analysis indicates that there is non-linear, inverted U-shape effect of agglomeration on productivity growth but in levels agglomeration is associated with higher productivity.