Publication: The World is Not Yet Flat: Transport Costs Matter!
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2016-10
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2016-11-01
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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.
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“Behrens, Kristian; Brown, W. Mark; Bougna, Theophile. 2016. The World is Not Yet Flat: Transport Costs Matter!. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7862. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25307 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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