IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v47y2010i12p2683-2703.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agglomeration Effects and Financial Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Maarten Jennen

    (Department of Finance, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Burg. Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam 3062 PA, The Netherlands, mjennen@rsm.nl)

  • Patrick Verwijmeren

    (Department of Finance, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia,. patrickv@unimelb.edu.au)

Abstract

This study empirically tests the trade-off between the costs and benefits of agglomeration for a large sample of firms. In line with the existing literature, it is found that population and employment density benefit productivity, but increase labour and real estate costs. To test the trade-off of benefits and drawbacks of agglomeration, the analysis focuses on the relation between agglomeration and profitability. For a sample of single-establishment Dutch firms, it is found that on average the costs of settling in an area with a dense spatial distribution of employment outweigh the benefits, an effect that holds for both urbanisation and localisation measures. In general, doubling the employment density will decrease the average return on assets by more than one percentage point.

Suggested Citation

  • Maarten Jennen & Patrick Verwijmeren, 2010. "Agglomeration Effects and Financial Performance," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(12), pages 2683-2703, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:47:y:2010:i:12:p:2683-2703
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098010363495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098010363495
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098010363495?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hans Degryse & Steven Ongena, 2005. "Distance, Lending Relationships, and Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 231-266, February.
    2. Ciccone, Antonio, 2002. "Agglomeration effects in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 213-227, February.
    3. Henderson, J V, 1974. "The Sizes and Types of Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 640-656, September.
    4. Dirk Brounen & Piet Eichholtz, 2005. "Corporate Real Estate Ownership Implications: International Performance Evidence," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 429-445, June.
    5. Neil Dunse & Colin Jones, 2002. "The existence of office submarkets in cities," Journal of Property Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 159-182, January.
    6. Gerald Carlino & Satyajit Chatterjee, 2002. "Employment Deconcentration: A New Perspective on America’s Postwar Urban Evolution," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 445-475, August.
    7. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
    8. Edward L. Glaeser, 1998. "Are Cities Dying?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 139-160, Spring.
    9. Wayne R. Archer & Marc T. Smith, 2003. "Explaining Location Patterns of Suburban Offices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 31(2), pages 139-164, June.
    10. Carlino, Gerald A. & Chatterjee, Satyajit & Hunt, Robert M., 2007. "Urban density and the rate of invention," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 389-419, May.
    11. Edward L. Glaeser, 2007. "The Economics Approach to Cities," NBER Working Papers 13696, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Glaeser, Edward L & Mare, David C, 2001. "Cities and Skills," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 316-342, April.
    13. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    14. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    15. Holmes, Thomas J. & Stevens, John J., 2004. "Spatial distribution of economic activities in North America," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 63, pages 2797-2843, Elsevier.
    16. Christopher R. Bollinger & Keith R. Ihlanfeldt & David R. Bowes, 1998. "Spatial Variation in Office Rents within the Atlanta Region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 35(7), pages 1097-1118, June.
    17. Christo Pirinsky & Qinghai Wang, 2006. "Does Corporate Headquarters Location Matter for Stock Returns?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1991-2015, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wahyu Widodo & Ruhul Salim & Harry Bloch, 2015. "The effects of agglomeration economies on technical efficiency of manufacturing firms: evidence from Indonesia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(31), pages 3258-3275, July.
    2. Xiaoying Li & Yin-Fang Zhang & Laixiang Sun, 2018. "Industry Agglomeration, Sub-National Institutions and the Profitability of Foreign Subsidiaries," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 969-993, December.
    3. Spyridon Stavropoulos & Dimitris Skuras, 2016. "Firm Profitability and Agglomeration Economies: An Elusive Relationship," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 107(1), pages 66-80, February.
    4. Cui Zhang, 2017. "Top manager characteristics, agglomeration economies and firm performance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 543-558, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. William C. Strange, 2009. "Viewpoint: Agglomeration research in the age of disaggregation," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(1), pages 1-27, February.
    2. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon, 2011. "The identification of agglomeration economies," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 253-266, March.
    3. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2020. "The Economics of Urban Density," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 3-26, Summer.
    4. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Pietrostefani, Elisabetta, 2019. "The economic effects of density: A synthesis," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 93-107.
    5. Michael Storper, 2010. "Agglomeration, Trade, And Spatial Development: Bringing Dynamics Back In," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 313-342, February.
    6. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    7. Cunningham, Chris & Patton, Michaela C. & Reed, Robert R., 2016. "Heterogeneous returns to knowledge exchange: Evidence from the urban wage premium," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 120-139.
    8. Rizov, Marian & Oskam, Arie & Walsh, Paul, 2012. "Is there a limit to agglomeration? Evidence from productivity of Dutch firms," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 595-606.
    9. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon & Sébastien Roux, 2010. "Estimating Agglomeration Economies with History, Geology, and Worker Effects," NBER Chapters, in: Agglomeration Economics, pages 15-66, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Koster, Hans R.A. & Ozgen, Ceren, 2021. "Cities and tasks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    11. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Gobillon, Laurent, 2015. "The Empirics of Agglomeration Economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 247-348, Elsevier.
    12. Moretti, Enrico, 2011. "Local Labor Markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 14, pages 1237-1313, Elsevier.
    13. Marianna Belloc & Paolo Naticchioni & Claudia Vittori, 2023. "Urban wage premia, cost of living, and collective bargaining," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 25-50.
    14. Roberto Camagni & Roberta Capello & Andrea Caragliu, 2013. "Una o infinite dimensioni urbane ottime? Alla ricerca di una dimensione di equilibrio," SCIENZE REGIONALI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2013(3), pages 53-88.
    15. Pierre‐Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton & Laurent Gobillon & Diego Puga & Sébastien Roux, 2012. "The Productivity Advantages of Large Cities: Distinguishing Agglomeration From Firm Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2543-2594, November.
    16. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2008. "The attenuation of human capital spillovers," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 373-389, September.
    17. Fu, Shihe, 2007. "Smart Cafe Cities: Testing human capital externalities in the Boston metropolitan area," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 86-111, January.
    18. Jordan Rappaport, 2006. "Consumption amenities and city crowdedness," Research Working Paper RWP 06-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    19. Shanzi Ke, 2010. "Agglomeration, productivity, and spatial spillovers across Chinese cities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1), pages 157-179, August.
    20. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Duranton, Gilles & Gobillon, Laurent, 2008. "Spatial wage disparities: Sorting matters!," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 723-742, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:47:y:2010:i:12:p:2683-2703. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.