The World is Not Yet Flat : Transport Costs Matter!

The paper provides evidence of the effects of changes in transport costs on the geographic concentration of industries. The analysis uses micro-level commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data to construct industry-specific ad valore...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Behrens, Kristian, Brown, W. Mark, Bougna, Theophile
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/10/26868018/world-not-yet-flat-transport-costs-matter
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25307
Description
Summary:The paper provides evidence of the effects of changes in transport costs on the geographic concentration of industries. The analysis uses micro-level commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data to construct industry-specific ad valorem trucking rates and continuous measures of geographic concentration. The findings show that, controlling for international trade exposure and input-output links, increasing trucking rates are significantly associated with declining geographic concentration. The effect is large: changes in trucking rates explain around 20 percent of the observed decline in geographic concentration of Canadian manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2008.