We analyze the possibility and consequences of coalition-formation amongst suppliers of retail services. We first provide a framework in which producers of Substitutes have an incentive to Cluster in market places in order to attract consumers dispersed in space. Owing to spatial externalities, the resulting spatial equilibrium can be welfare suboptimal. We characterize regimes in which we find...

This paper extends the work of Glaeser et al. (1992) by looking at effects of agglomeration economies on employment growth in Dutch city-industries and in very small (postal) zip code-industries in the Dutch province of South-Holland. At both levels of geographic detail, findings are broadly consistent with results from the earlier study in that employment growth is enhanced by industrial diver...

Spatial externalities among businesses, though notoriously difficult to measure, are a central concern in urban and regional economics. Traditionally they–along with closely related concepts such as agglomeration economies–have been studied empirically with hedonic models, production and cost functions, and simplified growth models. More recently, researchers have begun using direct measures of...

The urban clusters in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River (MRYR) in China include the Chang-Zhu-Tan urban agglomeration, the Wuhan metropolitan area, and the Poyang Lake urban agglomeration. While previous studies of urban expansion in China focused mainly on the coastal regions, this study aimed to investigate urban expansion patterns and factors in the MRYR, which are crucial for urban de...

This paper analyzes entrepreneurs in South Africa‘s informal sector. The aim is to determine the extent to which African informal retail trade spawns viable enterprises. To assess the prospects for South Africa‘s informal retail sector, questionnaires were obtained from owners of small-scale establishments in random sample taken throughout the country in 2007. Owner salary and sales data provid...