Regional Productivity Differences in the UK and France: From the Micro to the Macro
利用英国和法国覆盖所有雇员的行政数据，构建新数据集，分析两国228个和297个微观区域的生产率分布，发现经济密度对生产率差异有放大作用。
ABSTRACT We propose a new data resource that attempts to overcome limitations of standard firm‐level datasets for the United Kingdom (like the ARD/ABS) by building on administrative data covering the population of UK firms with at least one employee. We also construct a similar dataset for France and use both datasets to (1) provide some highlights of the data and an overall picture of the evolution of aggregate UK and French productivity and markups; (2) analyse the spatial distribution of productivity in both countries at a fine level of detail—228 Travel to Work Areas (TTWAs) for the United Kingdom and 297 Zones d'emploi (ZEs) for France—while focusing on the role of economic density. Our findings suggest that differences in firm productivity across regions are magnified in the aggregate by an increasing productivity return of density along the productivity distribution.