Skip Navigation


Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on June 21, 2008
Journal of Economic Geography 2008 8(6):779-810; doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn019
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
8/6/779    most recent
lbn019v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Altomonte, C.
Right arrow Articles by Colantone, I.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Related Collections
Right arrow F12 - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies
Right arrow L10 - General
Right arrow P20 - General
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?


© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Firm heterogeneity and endogenous regional disparities

Carlo Altomonte* and Italo Colantone**

*Department of Institutional Analysis and Public Management. Universita' Bocconi. Via Roentgen, 20136 Milan, Italy.
email <carlo.altomonte{at}unibocconi.it>
**LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Debériotstraat 34 - bus 3511, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
email <Italo.Colantone{at}econ.kuleuven.be>

JEL classifications: F12, L10, P20

We exploit the census of Romanian firms in order to provide a microfounded analysis of the sources of regional disparities in the country during the transition period, 1996–2001. To this extent, we adapt to the regional case a decomposition of firm-level output/value added dynamics based on semi-parametric productivity estimates. The methodology, robust to different techniques of TFP estimation, allows us to analyse the sources of regional disparities controlling for the heterogeneity in firms’ characteristics. We find that the emergence of regional disparities is to a large extent endogenous to the interaction between the restructuring activity of incumbent heterogeneous firms and the initial distribution of economic activities. A lesser role is played by the standard drivers of firms’ and workers’ cross-regional reallocation.

Keywords: regional convergence, economic geography, productivity, transition economies
Date submitted: 18 December 2006     Date accepted: 9 May 2008


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.