According to Naudé and Krugell (2003a) South Africa's cities are too small, dispersed, and over concentrated. In South Africa, households in the country's urban areas have average incomes almost thrice as high as the households in rural areas. More than 70% of South Africa's GDP is produced in only 19 urban areas (Naudé and Krugell 2003b). In Naudé and Krugell (2003a) it is stated that the rank-size rule shows that South Africa's urban agglomerations are too small and the cities mainly offer urbanization economies rather than localization economies. The main focus of this study will be looking at the specialization and diversity of South African cities. The aim is to determine whether certain cities should specialise in certain sectors, which they are currently involved in or should they add to their city and become more diverse and specialize in other sectors in order to promote economic growth. Many believe that a city which is more diverse would grow faster than a city specialising in a certain and thus be more beneficial to the economy than a specialized city would. This paper would like to address this phenomenon with regard to South African cities / Thesis (M.Com. (Economics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

According to Naudé and Krugell (2003a) South Africa's cities are too small, dispersed, and over concentrated. In South Africa, households in the country's urban areas have average incomes almost thrice as high as the households in rural areas. More than 70% of South Africa's GDP is produced in only 19 urban areas (Naudé and Krugell 2003b). In Naudé and Krugell (2003a) it is stated that the rank-size rule shows that South Africa's urban agglomerations are too small and the cities mainly offer urbanization economies rather than localization economies. The main focus of this study will be looking at the specialization and diversity of South African cities. The aim is to determine whether certain cities should specialise in certain sectors, which they are currently involved in or should they add to their city and become more diverse and specialize in other sectors in order to promote economic growth. Many believe that a city which is more diverse would grow faster than a city specialising in a certain and thus be more beneficial to the economy than a specialized city would. This paper would like to address this phenomenon with regard to South African cities / Thesis (M.Com. (Economics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

Studies conducted for the US have found a positive effect of human capital endowments on employment growth, with human capital endowments diverging at the same time. In contrast, studies for European countries have found convergence of human capital endowments. This paper tests these relationships for 99 Austrian districts for the observation period 1971-2011 by estimating how the presence of high-skilled employment affects total, low-skilled and high-skilled employment growth. To this end, OLS, fixed effects and first difference regressions are estimated. The results show continuous convergence of high-skilled employment which, however, slowed downed significantly since the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies, evidence for positive effects of high-skilled on total and low-skilled employment is only weak and varies over time. Furthermore, the results show that total and high-skilled employment in suburban areas grew faster than in other regions, while districts which bordered the Eastern Bloc were disadvantaged. Nevertheless, spatial neighbourhood effects within Austria are only weak. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers in Regional Science

The existing theoretical and empirical literature to investigate the existence of local market power is typically based on spatial competition models in the tradition of Hotelling's (1929) linear city and Salop's (1979) circular city. In models of this kind, strong assumptions are made that lead to a spatial homogeneity (symmetry) of firms in a highly stylized one-dimensional market space. However, some of these assumptions are hardly satisfied in many (retail) markets. The present thesis builds on a recent model by Chen and Riordan (2007), in which the market is characterized by a star-shaped graph with a central intersection. In an extension of Chen and Riordan, I distinguish between firms close to the center and firms in the periphery of a spatial market. This spatial heterogeneity leads to an asymmetric competition between firms. A central firm directly competes with a larger number of firms than remote firms do. The implications of the theoretical model are tested in two empirical applications to the retail gasoline market of Vienna and Austria. Using station level data on diesel prices, I estimate price reaction functions for gasoline stations in two different approaches. In the first approach the Austrian retail gasoline market is divided into numerous highly localized and delimited markets. The second approach analyzes the metropolitan area of Vienna and treats the whole market as one big network of gasoline stations, which are connected through the road network. In both approaches I apply econometric spatial autoregressive (SAR) models. The estimated parameters of the slopes of the reaction functions are used to evaluate the impact of individual gasoline stations on equilibrium market prices depending on their location within the market (network). All results obtained provide evidence for (more) central suppliers serving as a stronger reference in pricing than (rather) remote suppliers. Thus, the assumption of a symmetry in spatial competition which is usually implied by spatial competition models in theoretical and applied research, is rejected. (author's abstract)

We empirically investigate the importance of centrality (holding a central position in a spatial network) for strategic interaction in pricing for the Austrian retail gasoline market. Results from spatial autoregressive models suggest that the gasoline station located most closely to the market center - defined as the 1-median location - exerts the strongest effect on pricing decisions of other stations. We conclude that centrality influences firms' pricing behavior and further find that the importance of centrality increases with market size. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Export, migration and costs of trade: evidence from Central European firms, Regional Studies. This article analyses the link between immigration and trade at the firm level, utilizing information on the export activities of 8300 firms located in different Central European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) for various export markets as well as regional data on immigration. The empirical analysis suggests a strong, economically meaningful and statistically significant impact of immigration on the export propensity (extensive margin), whereas the influence on firms' export volumes (intensive margin) is much smaller. This leads to the conclusion that immigrants promote export activities to their home countries mainly by reducing fixed costs of trade.

We highlight the importance of "centrality" for pricing. Firms characterized by a more central position in a spatial network are more powerful in terms of having a stronger impact on their competitors' prices and on equilibrium prices. These propositions are derived from a simple theoretical model and investigated empirically for the retail gasoline market of Vienna, Austria. We compute a measure of network centrality based on the locations of gasoline stations in the road network. Results from a spatial autoregressive model show that prices of gasoline stations are more strongly correlated with prices of central competitors.

We analyse in a Footloose Capital productive public services provided by a central government aiming at reducing regional disparities. Two countervailing effects occur - one upon productivity and another upon local demand - the relative strength of which depends upon the financing scheme. Only if the "rich" region contributes sufficiently to the financing of the public services in the "poor" region, the poor region will actually gain. In studying these questions we pay particular attention to the dynamic adjustment processes and to the role of trade freeness. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Aún a pesar de la importancia de los movimientos poblacionales en nuestro país, la revisión de la literatura existente sugiere una falta de esfuerzo en estudiar de manera integrada la magnitud y la dirección de los flujos migratorios, especialmente de los movimientos internos. Este trabajo además de describir el proceso migratorio en Argentina y caracterizar a la población migrante, estudia los determinantes de las decisiones de migración, con especial énfasis en las características individuales y regionales, así como la influencia de las políticas públicas provinciales. Utilizando datos de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares, se estiman modelos para la probabilidad de ser migrante, tendiendo en cuenta estas características sociodemográficas y de las regiones de origen y destino de la población. Las estimaciones indican que las características individuales y los gastos en educación, vivienda pública y en programas de empleo que realizan las provincias son factores que determinan significativamente las decisiones de migración. El grado de urbanización y los recursos naturales de las provincias son las características regionales que más influencia tienen sobre los movimientos entre provincias.

Using a New Economic Geography (NEG) model, this study estimates the relationship between regional per capita income and the market accessibility of regions. This accessibility cannot be observed directly, so it has to be constructed. We follow a two-step-procedure as suggested by Redding and Venables (2004) and use results of a gravity-type model to infer \real market potential". To this end, we make use of a novel dataset of bi-regional trade ows between (and within) 254 European NUTS-2 regions (for 26 European countries excluding Bulgaria and Romania) for the year 2010. In a second step we test the hypothesis that access to domestic as well as to large foreign markets increases factor incomes. We find evidence that supports this hypothesis on a regional level. This also holds when we control for other potential income determinants. In order for the estimates to be unbiased, we additionally take the spatial structure of the data into account. Our findings indicate that, although the specification derived from theory should be able to capture some spatial spillovers, additionally controlling for spatial autocorrelation in the residuals is necessary to fit the European data. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series