Agglomeration economies, firm heterogeneity, and foreign direct investment in the United States

J. Myles Shaver, Fredrick Flyer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

657 Scopus citations

Abstract

An overlooked aspect of agglomeration economies, which are positive externalities that stem from the geographic clustering of industry, is that firms contribute to the externality in addition to benefiting from the externality. This insight suggests that if firms are heterogeneous they will differ in the net benefits they receive from agglomerating. We argue that firms with the best technologies, human capital, training programs, suppliers, or distributors will gain little, yet competitively suffer when their technologies, employees, and access to supporting industries spill over to competitors. Therefore, these firms have little motivation to geographically cluster despite the existence of agglomeration economies. Conversely, firms with the weakest technologies, human capital, training programs, suppliers, or distributors have little to lose and a lot to gain; therefore, these firms are motivated to geographically cluster. As a result, when firms are heterogeneous we expect agglomeration to be characterized by adverse selection. We find supportive evidence of these arguments by examining the location choice and survival of foreign greenfield investments in U.S. manufacturing industries.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1175-1193
Number of pages19
JournalStrategic Management Journal
Volume21
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2000

Keywords

  • Agglomeration
  • Firm heterogeneity
  • Foreign direct investment
  • Location
  • Survival

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