Rural Labour Markets: Local Multipliers and Agglomeration Spillovers

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Twenty-five percent of the population in developed countries, lives in rural areas.However, social scientists have largely focused on cities in recent decades. As a result, thereis a limited literature on rural areas. Although recent research documents large differences inemployment growth across rural areas, the drivers of labour market dynamics in these areasare still unclear. My research proposal aims to study local multipliers and agglomerationspillovers in rural labour markets, using data for Italy. Local multipliers can be defined as theadditional economic benefit that accrue to the local economy in the presence of a particulartype of economic activity. For example, if a new job is created in an area, the local economybenefits from an increase in both the spending of the firm and the spending of workers. As aresult, the multiplier effect leads to other local industries to benefit as well. Agglomerationspillovers are defined as the benefits that come when firms and people locate near oneanother together in a given geographic area. In the presence of agglomeration spillovers,rural areas can share intermediate input producer and labour pool, with a resulting decreasein cost of productions and relocation costs. Also, thanks to shared knowledge and improvedskills matching, firms experience higher innovation with lower costs and higher profits(O'Sullivan, 9th Edition). In the first strand of my research, I will study local multiplier effectsin rural labour market exploiting demand shocks for the manufacturing of food and beverageindustry. In the second strand, I will study agglomeration spillovers. My research designexploits shocks to SMEs and artisanal workshops. I will use an inverse process compared tothe literature, that tends to exploit firm entry. I will investigate the local labour market effectof firm destruction to explore the extent to which de-agglomeration spillovers affect thelabour market and lead to decrease in productivity and increase in costs at local level. Thefindings will inform governments and policy makers about drivers of labour market dynamicsin peripheral areas and help to address an important gap in our knowledge.