TESTING FOR CAUSALITY BETWEEN PRODUCTIVITY AND AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES
使用面板数据向量自回归模型，检验不同经济部门中生产率与地方化经济、城市化经济之间的双向因果关系，发现集聚效应并非单向，高生产率会促进本地城市和工业环境规模增长。
ABSTRACT The productivity effects of agglomeration economies are often treated as endogenous in empirical work due to the potential for reverse causality. The extent to which these relationships are actually simultaneously determined, however, remains largely unobserved. This paper estimates panel data vector autoregressions for different sectors of the economy to test for bidirectional causality between productivity and both localization and urbanization economies. The aim is to address some key questions that will help to identify the extent of the endogeneity problem. Can we actually observe bidirectionality in the data? Does it feature more for some industries than for others? Is it more prevalent for localization or urbanization economies? The results show that agglomeration economies are not strictly unidirectional and that higher levels of productivity can induce growth in the scale of local urban and industrial environments. The paper discusses the difficulties that these issues pose for the estimation of agglomeration economies.