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In the context of location choice, firms face a trade-off between the increasing agglomeration benefits and the rising costs of doing business along the high-speed rail (HSR) corridors. This study examines the causal impact of the HSR extension on industrial movement patterns in China's Greater Bay Area (GBA). We analyze two firm-level datasets for the period 2007–2018 using the difference-in-differences method. We find that after the HSR extension, large-scale manufacturing firms exhibit a decentralization trend in the central GBA. We also find that the service sector shows a clustering pattern in the GBA. However, this pattern differs between the GBA and other regions, urban districts, and suburban counties, highlighting the redistribution effect of the HSR extension on industrial growth across regions. These findings have important implications for industrial policymaking, as they help decision-makers reflect on the potential industrial movement trend in relation to the impact of HSR expansion. • HSR has causal impact on firm/industry relocation in China GBA. • Large-scale manufacturing firms exhibit a decentralization trend. • Service sector shows a clustering pattern in the GBA. • Industrial movement pattern differs between the GBA and other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of new firms is an important determinant of regional economic development and agglomeration is a key factor affecting the formation and scale of operations of new firms. The present paper is among the first to explore the relationship between agglomeration economies (using localization and urbanization economies) and new firms' formation and scale of operations in a developing country. We make use of rich firm‐level data and find that agglomeration has a significant impact on the formation of new firms and their scale of operation in Punjab, Pakistan. Our findings also reveal that localization at all scales (small, medium and large) has a positive correlation with the arrival of new firms, while medium‐scale and large‐scale localization is positively correlated with the scale of operation of new firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on a sample of small Iowa towns consistently collected over two decades, we investigate how agglomeration economies, social capital, human capital, local fiscal policy, and natural amenities affect new firm entry. We find that human capital and agglomeration are more conducive to new firm entry than are natural amenities, local fiscal policy, or social capital. The impact of local fiscal policy is too small to overcome the locational disadvantages from insufficient endowment of human capital and agglomeration. A rural development approach that encourages firm entry in rural towns with the largest endowments of human capital and market agglomeration would be more successful than trying to raise firm entry in every town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This paper aims to estimate the effect of agglomeration on the probability of being an informal firm in Cali, Colombia. Informal firms produce legal goods but do not comply with official regulations. This issue is relevant because, similar to other developing countries, the informal sector in Colombia employs more than 50 per cent of the workforce. The results of this study demonstrate that one standard deviation increase in agglomeration reduces by 52 per cent the probability of being informal. Results are consistent with the idea that informal firms benefit less from agglomeration because of legal restrictions that block the relationship with formal firms. Design/methodology/approach -- The objective of the present paper is to estimate the effect of agglomeration on the probability that a firm -- given a location -- chooses to be informal. The authors deal with endogeneity issues by using soil information related to earthquake risk, which reduces the height of buildings and therefore increases the cost of agglomeration. The analysis focuses on Cali, Colombia, where the informal sector employs 60 per cent of the workforce. The registration of economic activities is used as a criterion to identify informal firms, in such a way that the percentage of informal firms is 42 per cent. Findings -- The authors find that the effect of agglomeration is strongly negative. The probability of being informal diminishes by 52 per cent when agglomeration increases by one standard deviation. Results in this paper shed light on how formal firms tend to be localized in high-density commercial and industrial areas, while informal firms are localized in low-density and peripheral areas where the land for production is cheaper and where they can avoid the control of authorities. Originality/value -- Theory argues that spatial production externalities and commuting costs are among the main forces that shape the city's internal structure. Externalities include effects that increase firms' production, and therefore workers' income, when the size of the local economy grows. The authors now have strong evidence that firms' productivity is positively related with the volume of nearby employment. Most of the empirical findings concern firms in the formal sector and, accordingly, the literature says little about the effect of agglomeration on informal firms' location. However, this effect is crucial for developing countries where informal work is the main option for less-educated workers facing unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The location patterns and organizational networks of both advanced producer services (APS) and cultural industries have attracted extensive attention in geography and other related disciplines. However, most research on these two sectors has examined each one in isolation, without paying attention on how they are engaged with each other. Drawing on a network analysis of the inter-firm service provision relationships between 245 cultural firms and their APS providers during the firms' public listing processes in mainland China, this paper presents a pilot study of the functional interactions between cultural industries and APS from a geographical perspective. Our purpose is to expand the research on these two economic sectors from the simple mapping and ranking of their individual industrial activities to an investigation of the city-based spatial relationships between them. The outcome reveals that while the leading cultural firms and their APS intermediaries have demonstrated similar location patterns across major Chinese cities, the spatial interactions and connections between them are much more complicated than their co-location tends to suggest. This paper enriches our understanding of the functions of local clusters and trans-local networks in the establishment of inter-industrial linkages between the different sectors of knowledge economies. The paper also sheds light on the impacts of institutional context on the (spatial) development of cultural industries in a transitional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving rural broadband access has been touted as a rural development strategy, but there is limited evidence that broadband service affects rural economic growth. We measure the effect of broadband deployment on location decisions of new rural firms. Location-specific fixed effects are controlled by a counterfactual baseline that measures how local broadband service in the early 2000s affected local new firm entry in the early 1990s before broadband was available anywhere. The change in location choice probability of new firms from the counterfactual baseline to the actual response ten years later is the difference-in-differences estimate of the effect of broadband deployment on locations of new firms. We find that broadband availability has a positive and significant effect on location decisions of new firms in rural areas, which is confirmed by a robustness test using ZIP Code dummy variables. The broadband effect is largest in more populated rural areas and those adjacent to a metropolitan area, suggesting that this effect increases with agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]