IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa10p1117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market Selection and Regional Diversification - Empirical Regularities from German Panel-Data

Author

Listed:
  • Florian Noseleit

Abstract

Several theoretical approaches to explaining economic growth focus on externalities arising from interactions between economic agents. A frequently discussed source of such externalities is regional diversity of the industry structure. A large number of empirical studies support the argument that regional diversity can be beneficial to regional employment, innovation, and economic stability. It is not particularly surprising that diversity in the industry structure can be assumed to depend, in part, on the activity of new businesses. To date, however, little is known about the roles and paths new businesses take in the diversification of the industry structure. The central questions that this paper attempts to answer are how the market selection process influences the diversity of entries and how start-up activity influences diversity in the region and beyond. For an analysis of diversity patterns, we use regional data for West Germany over a 27-year period that includes specifics about employment at the industry level and allows us to distinguish and follow entry cohorts over time. Compared with the large amount of literature analyzing whether diversity or specialization is conducive to regional development, the literature discussing trends of regional diversification is rather limited. The preliminary results of this study can be summarized as follows. On the whole, regional diversity moderately increased over the last decades. Regional diversity and region size are related via an inverse u-shape. Establishment scale is negatively related to diversity. In addition, evidence supports that regional diversity increases with the number of entries but decreases with the number of exits. Modest specialization is positively associated. Certain empirical regularities for the role of entries are: Employment diversity in entries is increasing over time at the national level, while diversity at the regional level is decreasing on average. This antipodal development of diversity can be explained by a market selection favoring a diverse set of specializations at the regional level. Despite the decrease in regional diversity in entry cohorts over time, these entries contribute to an increase in total regional diversity due to a selection within entry cohorts that substantially differs from the existing regional industry structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Noseleit, 2011. "Market Selection and Regional Diversification - Empirical Regularities from German Panel-Data," ERSA conference papers ersa10p1117, European Regional Science Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa10/ERSA2010finalpaper1117.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barrios, Salvador & Bertinelli, Luisito & Strobl, E. & Teixeira, Antonio-Carlos, 2005. "The dynamics of agglomeration: evidence from Ireland and Portugal," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 170-188, January.
    2. John E. Wagner & Steven C. Deller, 1998. "Measuring the Effects of Economic Diversity on Growth and Stability," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 74(4), pages 541-556.
    3. Feldman, Maryann P. & Audretsch, David B., 1999. "Innovation in cities:: Science-based diversity, specialization and localized competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 409-429, February.
    4. Guy Dumais & Glenn Ellison & Edward L. Glaeser, 2002. "Geographic Concentration As A Dynamic Process," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 193-204, May.
    5. Henderson, Vernon, 1997. "Medium size cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 583-612, November.
    6. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2000. "Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When Does it Matter?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 37(3), pages 533-555, March.
    7. Thomas J. Holmes & John J. Stevens, 2002. "Geographic Concentration and Establishment Scale," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 682-690, November.
    8. Henderson, Vernon & Kuncoro, Ari & Turner, Matt, 1995. "Industrial Development in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 1067-1090, October.
    9. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    10. Federico Cingano & Fabiano Schivardi, 2004. "Identifying the Sources of Local Productivity Growth," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(4), pages 720-742, June.
    11. Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-1152, December.
      • Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991. "Growth in Cities," NBER Working Papers 3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Kallal, Hedi D. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Shleifer, Andrei, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Scholarly Articles 3451309, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    12. Attaran, Mohsen, 1986. "Industrial Diversity and Economic Performance in U.S. Areas," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 44-54, July.
    13. Hethey, Tanja & Schmieder, Johannes F., 2010. "Using worker flows in the analysis of establishment turnover : evidence from German administrative data," FDZ Methodenreport 201006_en, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    14. Lynch, Lawrence K., 1979. "Economic Structure and Economic Performance: Some Evidence for States," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12.
    15. John R. Kort, 1981. "Regional Economic Instability and Industrial Diversification in the U.S," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 596-608.
    16. Roland Andersson & John M. Quigley & Mats Wilhelmsson, 2005. "Agglomeration and the spatial distribution of creativity," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 84(3), pages 445-464, August.
    17. Joshua Drucker, 2009. "Trends in Regional Industrial Concentration in the United States," Working Papers 09-06, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    18. Paul Cavelaars, 2005. "Has the Tradeoff Between Productivity Gains and Job Growth Disappeared?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 45-64, February.
    19. Salvador Barrios & Luisito Bertinelli & Eric Strobl, 2006. "Geographic Concentration And Establishment Scale: An Extension Using Panel Data," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 733-746, October.
    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. Belmartino, Andrea, 2016. "Diversidad industrial en las provincias argentinas y factores económicos asociados (1996-2012)," Nülan. Deposited Documents 2604, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, Centro de Documentación.

    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. Florian Noseleit, 2020. "The Role of Entry and Market Selection for the Dynamics of Regional Diversity and Specialization," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 76-94, July.
    2. Park, Jeong-Il, 2020. "Industrial diversity in building units and factors associated with diversity: A case study of the Seoul Metropolitan Area," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(5).
    3. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2001. "Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation, and the Life Cycle of Products," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1454-1477, December.
    4. Saheum Hong & Yu Xiao, 2016. "The Influence of Multiple Specializations on Economic Performance in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-16, September.
    5. Oliver Farhauer & Alexandra Kröll, 2012. "Diversified specialisation—going one step beyond regional economics’ specialisation-diversification concept," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 32(1), pages 63-84, March.
    6. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    7. 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.
    8. Delgado, Mercedes & Porter, Michael E. & Stern, Scott, 2014. "Clusters, convergence, and economic performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1785-1799.
    9. Edward L. Glaeser & William R. Kerr, 2009. "Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 623-663, September.
    10. Koen Frenken & Frank G. van Oort & Thijs Verburg & Ron A. Boschma, 2004. "Variety and regional economic growth in the Netherlands," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 0502, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Dec 2004.
    11. Gilles Duranton & Diego Puga, 2000. "Diversity and Specialisation in Cities: Why, Where and When Does it Matter?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 37(3), pages 533-555, March.
    12. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissensintensive Unternehmensdienste, Wissens-Spillovers und regionales Wachstum. Teilprojekt 1: Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung – Welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert das Wach," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58342.
    13. Annekatrin Niebuhr, 2010. "Migration and innovation: Does cultural diversity matter for regional R&D activity?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 89(3), pages 563-585, August.
    14. Li, Dongya & Lu, Yi & Wu, Mingqin, 2012. "Industrial agglomeration and firm size: Evidence from China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 135-143.
    15. Jordi Jofre-Monseny & Raquel Marín-López & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2012. "What underlies localization and urbanization economies? Evidence from the location of new firms," Working Papers 2012/9, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    16. Henri L.F. de Groot & Jacques Poot & Martijn J. Smit, 2007. "Agglomeration, Innovation and Regional Development: Theoretical Perspectives and Meta-Analysis," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-079/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Shihe Fu & Stephen L. Ross, 2013. "Wage Premia in Employment Clusters: How Important Is Worker Heterogeneity?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 271-304.
    18. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    19. Beaudry, Catherine & Schiffauerova, Andrea, 2009. "Who's right, Marshall or Jacobs? The localization versus urbanization debate," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 318-337, March.
    20. Wei Zhao & Chao Zhu & Yaoyao Zhu, 2022. "The Comparative Advantage of Cities and Innovation Value Chain: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-14, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa10p1117. 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: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    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.