Distance-based agglomeration externalities and neighbouring firms’ characteristics

This paper tests the hypothesis that firms with different characteristics can differ in their capability to produce local externalities by investigating the relationship between firm-specific distance-based weighted agglomeration measures and firms’ short-run productivity growth in the Italian manufacturing industry. The results suggest that positive localization economies increase with distance when neighbouring firms’ characteristics are accounted for. Diversification-type forces have negative effects on productivity growth at short distances, while there are positive effects at longer distances regardless of the weighting scheme considered. Moreover, the negative effect of inter-industry externalities seems to persist over distance when neighbouring firms’ characteristics are accounted for.