Eva Coll-Martínez (p)

Michaela Fuchs

The aim of this paper is to infer the spatial extent of agglomeration economies for the symbolic-based creative service industries (CSI) in Barcelona and its relationship with firms’ performance. Using data from Mercantile Register (SABI) that provides micro-geographic data of firms between 2006 and 2011 I estimate the effect of intra-industry agglomeration in rings around location on productivity in Barcelona. Main results are that, (1) for the symbolic-based CSI and publishing firms, at a micro-spatial level, localisation economies are not so relevant, although much work still remains to be done on this issue; and (2) for advertising agencies localisation economies – mainly understand as networking and knowledge externalities – have positive effects on TFP at shorter distances (less than 250 metres), while urbanisation economies seem not to be so relevant for TFP.
These results strongly suggest the importance of networking or information spillovers in CIs, which are strongly concentrated in the largest cities.

Viola Von Berlepsch (p)

Michaela Fuchs

see extended abstract

Michael Weber (p), Lukas Mergele

Michaela Fuchs

This paper studies whether the decentralization of public employment
services (PES) increases job placements among the unemployed. Decentralizing
PES has been a widely applied reform used by governments aiming to enhance their
efficacy. However, economic theory is ambiguous about its effects, and empirical
evidence has been scarce. Using a difference-in-differences design, we exploit unique
within-country variation in decentralization provided by the partial devolution of
German job centers in 2012. We find that decentralization reduce job placements by
approximately 10%. Decentralized providers expand the use of active labor market
programs and monitoring strategies which diminish job seekers’ reemployment
prospects but shift costs to higher levels of government.