Publication: Urban Agglomeration and Firm Innovation: Evidence from Developing Asia
Loading...
Published
2021-11
ISSN
Date
2021-12-02
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between urban agglomeration and firm innovation using a recently developed dataset that consistently measures city boundaries across Asia together with geo-referenced firm-level data. It finds that the spatial distribution of innovation by firms is highly concentrated within countries. Further, firms in larger cities have substantially higher propensities to introduce product and process innovations and undertake R&D activities, a result that holds for subgroups of countries and even when the largest cities are excluded from the analysis. Finally, the presence of high quality universities and highly ranked engineering departments in cities is positively associated with firm innovation, lending support to the idea that the accumulation of human capital locally is a key channel through which urban agglomeration affects innovation.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Chen, Liming; Hasan, Rana; Jiang, Yi. 2021. Urban Agglomeration and Firm Innovation: Evidence from Developing Asia. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9861. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36637 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Urban Agglomeration and Firm Innovation(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-10-05)This paper examines the relationship between urban agglomeration and firm innovation using a recently developed dataset that consistently measures city boundaries across Asia together with geo-referenced firm-level data. It finds that the spatial distribution of innovation by firms is highly concentrated within countries. Further, firms in larger cities have substantially higher propensities to introduce product and process innovations and to undertake R&D activities, a result that holds for subgroups of countries and even when the largest cities are excluded from the analysis. Finally, the presence of high-quality universities and highly ranked engineering departments in cities is positively associated with firm innovation, lending support to the idea that the accumulation of human capital locally is a key channel through which urban agglomeration affects innovation.Publication Product Innovation by Incumbent Firms in Developing Economies : The Roles of Research and Development Expenditures, Trade Policy, and the Investment Climate(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007-08)A model of firm innovation illustrates the effects of the threat of imitation and product varieties on a representative firm's decision to invest in research and development to produce new product varieties. The model motivates two empirical questions: (1) Is research and development partially correlated with firms' propensity to introduce new products or product innovation in developing countries? (2) Do trade policies and the national investment climate affect firms' propensity for product innovation? The econometric evidence suggests that the answers are yes and yes, but the investment climate affects product innovation in a manner that is consistent with the presence of market failures and state capture. National trade-policy distortions appear to reduce the probability of product innovation, and the density of exporting firms at the national level also seems to positively affect the propensity to introduce new products by individual firms. The paper discusses some policy implications.Publication Urbanization, Agglomeration, and Economic Development(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008)This paper reviews the linkages between urbanization and economic development. It articulates the relationship between urban density and potential increases in productivity, through specialization, complementarities in production, through the diffusion of knowledge and mimicry, and simply through size and scale. The factors limiting the efficient sizes of cities are analyzed. The paper reviews empirical knowledge, from underdeveloped countries as well as high-income industrial societies, about the importance and magnitudes of these productivity gains. The analysis documents the close link between gains in economic efficiency and the urbanization of populations in most parts of the world.Publication Human Capital and University-Industry Linkages' Role in Fostering Firm Innovation : An Empirical Study of Chile and Colombia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)A firm's absorptive capacity, human capital and linkages with knowledge institutions have been shown to increase the firm's probability of innovating in OECD economies. Despite its importance for national- and firm-level competitiveness, few papers examine the impact of the same variables for firms innovation in Latin America. This paper investigates the link between firm innovation and its absorption capacity as proxied by the presence of a R&D department, the firm's human capital, and its interaction with research centers and universities. We analyze the case of Chilean and Colombian manufacturing firms using data from innovation surveys. A probit regression model is applied to identify the determinants of innovation activity. We find that collaboration with university and research institutions is associated with an increase in the probability of introducing a new product in Chilean and Colombian firms of 29 and 44 percent, respectively, and it can increase up to 58 percent in the case of Colombian firms interacting with research centers. Moreover, firms whose employees have a higher level of education, or whose managers/supervisors have a higher (perceived) level of knowledge, are more likely to innovate. Although the estimates could be affected by biases and suffer from shortcomings in data, the findings suggest that policies and incentives to increase firm-level human capital and industry-university linkages are important to increase innovation in Latin America.Publication Innovative and Absorptive Capacity of International Knowledge : An Empirical Analysis of Productivity Sources in Latin American Countries(2012-01-01)This paper examines two sources of global knowledge spillovers: foreign direct investments and trade. Empirical evidence demonstrates that foreign direct investment and trade can contribute to overall domestic productivity growth only when the technology gap between domestic and foreign firms is not too large and when a sufficient absorptive capacity is available in domestic firms. The paper proposes the terms research and development and labor quality to capture the innovative and absorptive capacity of the country. The spillover effects in productivity are analyzed using a stochastic frontier approach. This productivity (in terms of total factor productivity) is decomposed using a generalized Malmquist output oriented index, in order to evaluate the specific effect in technical change, technical efficiency change, and scale efficiency change. Using country-level data for 16 Latin American countries for 1996-2006, the empirical analysis shows positive productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment and trade only when the country has absorptive capacity in terms of research and development. Foreign direct investment and trade spillovers are found to be positive and significant for scale efficiency change and total productivity factor change.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Quantitative Analysis of Road Transport Agreements (QuARTA)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-13)Road freight transport is indispensable to international economic cooperation and foreign trade. Across all continents, it is commonly used for short and medium distances and in long distance haulage when minimizing time is important. In all instances governments play a critical role in ensuring the competitive advantage of private sector operators. Countries often have many opportunities to minimize the physical or administrative barriers that increase costs, take measures to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of road transport, or generally nurture the integral role of international road freight transport in the global trade logistics industry. Road freight transport is critical to domestic and international trade. It is the dominant mode of transport for overland movement of trade traffic, carrying more than 80 percent of traffic in most regions. Generally, nearly all trade traffic is carried by road at some point. Therefore, the cost and quality of road transport services is of critical importance to trade competitiveness of countries and regions within countries. In fact, road transport is fundamental to modern international division of labor and supply-chain management.Publication South Africa - Financial Sector Assessment(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-01-01)The South African financial system has weathered the shock of COVID-19 but faces growing risks emanating from a weak macroeconomic outlook. The pandemic crisis hit South Africa hard, with nonresident capital outflows accelerating and the domestic and global slowdown precipitating a6.4 percent GDP contraction in 2020. A brief period of liquidity stress was managed with new central bank facilities and a lowering of liquidity requirements; and banks proved resilient thanks to sound capital and liquidity buffers. Asset management and pension assets saw falling valuations, but redemption pressures quickly dissipated as markets stabilized. The intensification of the sovereign financial system nexus emerging from the crisis poses risks going forward, and a resurgence of the pandemic could deteriorate asset quality. Banks are resilient in the FSAP’s baseline; however, amedium-term adverse stress scenario would cause a significant decline in capital although most banks would remain sufficiently capitalized. Under stress, banks could face some liquidity gaps, particularly at very short maturities, highlighting the importance of continued close monitoring. The impact of COVID-19 on insurers has thus far been contained, but prudential rules should be strengthened to ensure the measure of capital is sufficiently robust.Publication Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-15)The Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 is the latest edition of the series formerly known as Poverty and Shared Prosperity. The report emphasizes that reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity must be achieved in ways that do not come at unacceptably high costs to the environment. The current “polycrisis”—where the multiple crises of slow economic growth, increased fragility, climate risks, and heightened uncertainty have come together at the same time—makes national development strategies and international cooperation difficult. Offering the first post-Coronavirus (COVID)-19 pandemic assessment of global progress on this interlinked agenda, the report finds that global poverty reduction has resumed but at a pace slower than before the COVID-19 crisis. Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty with less than US$2.15 per person per day. Progress has essentially plateaued amid lower economic growth and the impacts of COVID-19 and other crises. Today, extreme poverty is concentrated mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and fragile settings. At a higher standard more typical of upper-middle-income countries—US$6.85 per person per day—almost one-half of the world is living in poverty. The report also provides evidence that the number of countries that have high levels of income inequality has declined considerably during the past two decades, but the pace of improvements in shared prosperity has slowed, and that inequality remains high in Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, people’s incomes today would need to increase fivefold on average to reach a minimum prosperity threshold of US$25 per person per day. Where there has been progress in poverty reduction and shared prosperity, there is evidence of an increasing ability of countries to manage natural hazards, but climate risks are significantly higher in the poorest settings. Nearly one in five people globally is at risk of experiencing welfare losses due to an extreme weather event from which they will struggle to recover. The interconnected issues of climate change and poverty call for a united and inclusive effort from the global community. Development cooperation stakeholders—from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to communities and citizens acting locally in every corner of the globe—hold pivotal roles in promoting fair and sustainable transitions. By emphasizing strategies that yield multiple benefits and diligently monitoring and addressing trade-offs, we can strive toward a future that is prosperous, equitable, and resilient.Publication Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05)Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.