Arianne Dumayas (p)

Mark Partridge

Given the extensive involvement of Japanese companies in the development and operation of special economic zones in the Philippines, particularly in industrial parks or manufacturing economic zones, this paper aims to explore the characteristics and performance of the Japanese affiliated industrial parks in the Philippines. This paper also discusses the prominent trend in special economic zones development, particularly, the emergence of private foreign partnership economic zones. This paper also presents relevant facts and figures about special economic zones in the Philippines. This paper also examines the case of four affiliated-Japanese economic zones in the Philippines: First Philippine Industrial Park (FPIP)- Sumitomo Corporation, Lima Technology Center (LTC)- Marubeni Corporation, and Lima Technology Center (LTC)- Marubeni Corporation. This study has found that Japanese affiliated industrial zones are concentrated in few areas of the country, particularly in the industrialized province of Batangas, Cavite, and Laguna. In comparison with other manufacturing zones and all other economic zones, Japanese affiliated industrial parks are found to deliver more significant outcome, particularly in terms of number of tenant firms, investments, exports, and employment. The nature of cooperation of Japanese companies varies from full involvement in development and operation to conducting specific functions such as sales and marketing.

Lucas Vieira Magalhães (p), Geoffrey Caruso

Arianne Dumayas

Recent discussions in urban planning point to the desirable emergence of '15-minutes cities', where citizens can fulfil their needs within a time threshold from their home. In parallel, post-COVID working patterns show a permanent rise in work-from-home, with potential impacts on commercial floorspace in cities. In addition, there are conflicting trends between 'buying-local' tendencies and the rise of online shopping. These 3 changes pose a fundamental question for cities worldwide: what will be of urban retail?

In order to address this issue, this paper proposes a theoretical agent-based model with micro-economic foundations, considering firms and households. The model simulates where retail firms emerge and cluster in a theoretical space and seeks to identify the conditions and forces that lead to the existence of retail and different location patterns. The model is then used to analyse how buying-local preferences and online-shopping behaviour when traded-off against transport costs affect these patterns. Early results show that a minimum preference for deliberately buying locally can significantly change the pattern of location of shops in a city. Citizens deliberately choosing to buy locally tend to lead to a more decentralised shopping landscape, making '15-minute city' goals more feasible from a public policy perspective.

Karina Sass (p), Eduardo Amaral Haddad, Eduardo Mario Mendiondo

Lucas Vieira Magalhães

Droughts can lead to severe socio-economic impacts on cities by affecting industrial production, food and energy price, and actual income. As the frequency and intensity of this climatic event are increasing because of climate change, an assessment of cities’ vulnerability to drought is essential to develop adaptation strategies. This study explores the economic effects of droughts on the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA), an area with a high concentration of people and economic activities and frequently hit by droughts. Its method comprises an integrated system of analysis that puts together climate and economic databases. The integrated system modeling divides into three steps: i) calculate a variable to represent drought conditions; ii) estimate the direct impact of droughts on sectorial activities through an econometric model; and iii) estimate the total impact on the economy through a Spatial Computable General Equilibrium (SCGE) model calibrated with municipal data. The results of the econometric model suggested that energy and water-intensive industries are the ones more sensitive to droughts in the SPMA. The results from the simulations in the SCGE model showed that the impact on these sectors could spread to the entire economy, indirectly affecting activities such as land transport, construction, and personal services and decreasing the total production and disposable income of metropolitan municipalities.

Mark Partridge (p), Carlianne Patrick

Karina Sass

Abstract:
We use confidential U.S. Census microdata combined with three different datasets of U.S. counties that attracted highly-incentivized large establishments. Further, we employ a dataset that includes random counties that "win" a large establishment. We compare outcomes for plants in U.S. counties that “win” a new plant to plants in similar U.S. counties that did not to receive the new plant, providing empirical evidence on the economic theories used to justify local industrial policies. We find little evidence that the average highly-incentivized large plant generates significant productivity spillovers in contrast to Greenstone, Hornbeck, and Moretti (2010) assessment of the openings of highly-incentivized plants.

Our semiparametric estimates of the overall local agglomeration function indicate that residual TFP is linear for the range of “agglomeration” densities most commonly observed, suggesting local economic shocks do not push local economies to a new higher equilibrium. Examining changes twenty years after the new plant entrant, we find some evidence of persistent, positive increases in winning county-manufacturing shares that are not driven by changes in the pattern of establishment births or establishment deaths. Nonetheless, we find little evidence that supports using local industrial policies that consist of large tax-incentive packages to attract big firms to a particular locality.

KEYWORDS: local economic development, agglomeration externalities, persistence