Agglomeration and firm performance: One firm’s medicine is another firm’s poison
研究了集聚对企业绩效的影响，发现不同企业因自身特征（如规模、知识基础）不同，从集聚中获益或受损，且这种调节效应是非线性的。
In this paper, we aim to reduce the ambiguity surrounding the agglomeration–performance relationship. We do so by taking firm-level and agglomeration-level heterogeneity into account simultaneously and focusing on the interactions between these two levels of analysis in explaining the effect of agglomeration on firm performance. Our central argument is that while some firms will benefit from agglomeration, others will be harmed by it. To assess our claims, we estimate multilevel models on firms’ productivity with nonlinear interaction effects between the agglomeration-level (urbanization, specialization, and knowledge intensity) and firm-level variables (size, internal knowledge base, and face-to-face contacts) using data from a sample of Dutch firms. Our results show that the effects of different dimensions of agglomeration on firm performance are strongly and nonlinearly moderated by firm characteristics. Moreover, the moderation effect is not uniform across the different agglomeration dimensions.