Plants' self-selection, agglomeration economies and regional productivity in Chile
评估了工厂自我选择和集聚经济对智利食品制造业区域生产率的相对贡献，发现高生产率工厂倾向于选址在产业集聚、结构多样且市场大的区域，且自我选择效应大于集聚经济效应。
In this study, we assess the relative contribution of plants' self-selection and agglomeration economies to a region's productivity level. We focus on manufacturing plants by region in the Chilean food industry, which is not only a major source of employment and exports but also spatially dispersed. Our estimation of plant-level productivity corrects for possible simultaneity between productivity and conventional inputs and plants' self-selection to locate in specific markets. Moreover, we account for three sources of externalities: localization, urbanization and demand-driven scale economies in our estimation. Then, a censored regression model relates regional productivity-distribution measures to agglomeration economies. We find that high-productivity (exporting) plants locate in a region where other plants in food industry agglomerate, industrial structure is diversified and market size is large. Our results suggest that plants' self-selection outweighs the contribution of agglomeration economies in increasing a region's productivity level.