Mathieu Paul Adriaan Steijn (p)

Roberta Capello

The triumph of cities is suggested to come about due to an increasing need for face-to-face contact. Although it is well understood that face-to-face contact is more effective in fostering trust and understanding than telecommunication, so far the evidence that these are the actual drivers behind the increasing importance of proximity is at best suggestive. Our current understanding of why and for who the premium of proximity has increased is actually rather limited. The who question is vital as not all cities are triumphing. This research aims at demonstrating, conceptualising and testing changes in the importance of the traditional Marshallian forces of input-output linkages, labour market pooling and knowledge spillovers. Although at the current stage only knowledge spillovers are included. Following Ellison, Glaeser & Kerr (2010) the industry-specific relative importance of each of the Marshallian forces is calculated over time from 1988 to 2015. Building on the NK-model developed by Fleming & Sorenson (2001) the complexity of patents used by industries is calculated as proxy for the importance of knowledge spillovers. First results using manufacturing industries show that industries using complex technologies are indeed co-agglomerating more with industries using similar technologies than industries using less complex technologies. A refinement that only uses employment of small firms compared to large firms. Suggests, that especially small firms are co-agglomerating more for knowledge spillovers. Results should however be interpreted with great caution as some of the robustness checks fail to corroborate the current results.

Daniel Oto-Peralías (p)

Roberta Capello

This paper shows the potential of historical frontiers to shape the economic geography of countries. I focus on the case of Spain to explore how extreme frontier insecurity in the Middle Ages can condition the colonization of the territory in such a way to make it one of the most desert areas in Europe. First, I document that Spain stands out in Europe with an anomalous settlement pattern characterized by a very low density in its southern half, which cannot be explained by geographic and climatic factors. Second, I exploit a spatial discontinuity that was meaningful during the Christian colonization of central Spain in the Middle Ages to investigate the historical roots of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that medieval frontier insecurity heavily conditioned the colonization of the territory, resulting in a very sparse occupation of the affected region, a high degree of militarization, and a ranching orientation of the economy. The persistence in low settlement density since this early period is what explains the current anomalous spatial distribution of the population in southern Spain.

Thi Thu Huyen Tran (p)

Roberta Capello

This paper studies the size and location of urban green spaces in cities. It discusses the first and second best sizes and locations of green space in cities in from a theoretical view point. Our main result is that the urban land dedicated to green spaces is a non-monotone function of the distance to the center. This result is confirmed by the study of urban structures extracted from a database of more than 300 EU cities.