Governments around the world are fostering industrial ‘clusters’, hoping to create agglomeration economies. Using the political division of Germany in 1949, this column argues that heightened firm density can raise costs for incumbent firms in addition to the often-cited agglomeration benefits. This is important for policymakers contemplating efforts to promote their local areas by targeted cluster initiatives and bidding to attract large firms. Policy efforts that are neutral in orientation – such as physical infrastructure investments or improving the generation and dissemination of knowledge – may be more effective alternatives.

Paul Krugman suggests that his Nobel-prize-winning “core-periphery” model was perhaps more relevant a century ago than today. This appears to be true in terms of overall manufacturing concentrations in Europe and North America, which are unravelling. Large-scale agglomeration forces, however, are alive and well in the developing world, as are localised sectoral clustering phenomena in industrialised countries.

Governments spend heavily on industrial clusters. They are wasting their money if firms naturally cluster to reap agglomeration gains. This column presents evidence from France that questions policymakers’ enthusiasm for promoting clusters.

The analysis of agglomeration economies focuses around two separate important questions: how large the gains from agglomeration are and how much firms internalize these gains when deciding where to locate. In order to provide answers, the authors of CEPR DP6858 focus on agglomeration externalities and distinguish between urbanization economies, which refer to the cross fertilization of different industries on a given territory and localization economies, which group the concepts of externalities on inputs market, on the labour market and knowledge.