Small businesses within the digital sector are spread across the USA. However, a significant number of promising small businesses concentrate in major technology hubs, either initially or through relocation. This phenomenon can be attributed to the influential role played by localized markets for financing and acquisition, which is, in turn, driven by the dominant market positions held by major digital platforms. Our research demonstrates a clear pattern of localized acquisition markets, particularly in sectors frequently targeted by the seven largest American digital giants-Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook), Oracle, and Adobe, collectively known as 'Big Tech'. This localization trend has become more pronounced between 2000 and 2020. Our analysis indicates that the gravitational pull of these acquisition markets poses challenges to local initiatives aimed at fostering digital businesses. These efforts would be more successful if measures were taken to limit the market influence of digital platforms.

Are the agglomeration economies of technology hubs augmented by a localized market for start-ups – acquisitions, and IPOs? How does this affect the ability of places outside of those hubs to foster digital startups as a tool of local economic development? We study this with a particular focus on acquisitions by the seven largest American digital platforms – Amazon, Alphabet [Google], Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle and Adobe, which we call, collectively, Big Tech. We cover the years 2001-2020. We show that firms acquired by Big Tech are, disproportionately to the sectors in which they operate, concentrated in major tech clusters, and particularly in the Silicon Valley (San Francisco/San Jose). Foreign acquisitions by Big Tech also show a marked concentration in a few countries, and particular places in those countries. NASDAQ IPOs of firms in relevant sectors are similarly concentrated. Acquisition, or the less common alternative, IPO, is the second major phase of financing for a digital start up. The first phase is commonly associated with venture capital (VC), and location proximate to venture capital companies has often been seen as a motivation for locating in a tech cluster. We find, however, that neither VC funding, nor funding an investor located in the Silicon Valley, predicts either acquisition by Big Tech, or IPO. Funding by any of the VCs that helped launch the Big Tech firms, however, is strongly associated with Big Tech acquisition. This suggests an important role for social networks in both the first and second phases of financing, but not necessarily a geographical role in the first phase.We argue that the acquisition market – and its effects on both the major tech hubs and the left behind rest – depends crucially on the proprietary control of access to various digital network products. Regulation of these markets, particularly in the form of common carrier status and open standards, could achieve a considerable re-balancing.

The diversity of knowledge and skill is an important element of a national system of innovation. We propose a theory of how certain labor market institutions affect diversity, and through that route affect levels of innovation. Specifically, unemployment protection (UP) encourages diversity by reducing the risk burden of a broad range of learning, or human capital investment; for that reason, UP fosters innovation. Employment protection (EP) reduces the risk burden of a much narrower range of learning; for this reason, it will not enhance diversity to the extent UP does, and it may actually depress overall diversity and innovation. Our approach differs from previous research on labor market insurance and skill formation, much of which has dealt with a distinction between general and specific skills, and which has treated the effects of UP and EP as similar. Estimating the effects of UP and EP on patenting for 25 OECD countries over 24 years, we find a positive effect from UP, a negative effect from EP, and evidence that the UP effect is mediated by diversity of skill.

The overall rise in inequality in the USA since 1980 has been matched by a rise in inequality between places; local and regional development policies aimed at reversing this polarisation have seen limited success. We propose an explanation for the spatial polarisation of prosperity and the failure of the policies to remedy it. Our explanation is based on the interaction of monopoly power, agglomeration economies in technology clusters and the power of financial sector actors over non-financial firms-all phenomena characteristic of the post-1980 economy. We review evidence for each of these elements and propose some causal relationships between them, as an outline of an ongoing research programme.

In proposing a role of economic diplomacy on behalf of cities, Cote, Estrin and Shapiro (2020) take it as read that promoting a city in the ranks of world cities, of key centers of corporate headquarters, business services, and new technology, is a good thing for that city. A city, however, is made up of heterogeneous actors, and in any particular city that grows in this way many of those actors will become worse off. Moreover, if we consider the problem from the standpoint of a national economic system, or of the global system as a whole, the growth of world cities may be due not so much to the conduct of mutually beneficial trade as to the appropriation of monopoly rents. Business policy researchers should identify the stakes for the likely winners and losers, and also take market structure issues into account. Policies based simply on promoting a city's growth and international standing make inequality within and between a country's cities worse, and implicitly embrace the growth of market power as a worthy objective.

Many of the most prosperous places in the U.S. are hotbeds of technology and also the home bases of companies which exercise monopoly power across much larger territories – nationally, or even globally. This paper makes four arguments about regional income disparities. First, monopoly, and the market for new prospective monopolies amplifies agglomeration economies, making locations invincible and inimitable. Second, the taxes imposed by the monopoly firms on a wide range of economic activity, together with the restrictions they are able to impose on the dissemination and use of technology, further inhibit local economic development in other places. Third, financialization – the power of the financial sector over both firms which are receiving financing and firms which are paying cash out – serves to feed these spatially concentrated monopolies at the expense of other places and industries. Finally, we conclude that the most efforts at local economic development would be best furthered by breaking up the concentrated economic power of technology and finance.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates one particular aspect of human capital formation: the relative effectiveness of training, as reflected in its effect on the probability of securing continued employment during the recent financial crisis. It uses a panel of 3983 individuals for the period 2008–11 and focuses on how the effects of training differ between the South and the North of Italy and across workers with different levels of education. The most striking result is that the effect of training on continued employment is notably stronger in the South than in the North of the country.

Technology can affect the distribution of income directly via its influence on both the bargaining power of different parties and the marginal product of different factors of production. This paper focuses mainly on the first route. The role of power is transparent in the case of medieval choke points but modern network technologies have similar features. There is also substantial evidence -- from truckers and retail clerks to CEOs -- that power affects the determination of wages. But power relations inevitably have institutional dimensions; regulatory frameworks influence industry structures and the market power of large companies as well as the parameters that determine the earnings of different groups of workers. The institutional framework is arrived at through complex social and political processes; technology, however, may exert some influence on the course of those processes.

National economies have become, over the past half century, radically more integrated. The process of international economic integration is viewed by many as being global (hence the term globalization). This chapter argues that regional economic integration – regions here in the sense of sub-continental mega-regions, such as Europe and China – is likely to eclipse global integration in coming decades. Global integration tends to be institutionally minimalist, such as we see reflected in simple WTO-style market liberalization. Economic processes integrated at a sub-global level can be associated with deeper regulation. Following a shock which leads to a restructuring of the institutions governing economic integration, the institutional simplicity of global integration allows for relatively rapid adoption, but global integration will be rolled back as sub-global integration progresses. Global integration is the hare, regional integration the tortoise.

This paper explores the relative effectiveness of training in securing continued employment in a time of economic downturn, within the context of the Italian territorial dualism. We use a panel on 4,861 individuals for the period 2008-2011 and focus on how the effects of training differ between the South and the Centre-North of Italy, and also across workers with different levels of education.

We study private sector investments in innovation in the early days of the financial crisis (between mid 2008 and mid 2009), using a survey covering more than 5,000 firms across 21 European countries. Our interest is in how the stock of skilled labour affects the persistence of investment in innovation during a macroeconomic downturn. We infer differences in skill from national levels of participation in vocational education and training (VET) programmes interacted with levels of employment protection (EP) and unemployment insurance (RR). These forms of insurance should lead VET students to undertake training for skills which are more risky as human capital investments, but potentially more productive. We show that the strongest sustained investment in innovation is associated with a combination of high VET with either strong EP or strong RR. The result supports the view that the supply of skills makes an important contribution to innovation, and that social insurance can encourage socially beneficial risk-taking in educational choices.

We propose an explanation for the growth of executive pay since the 1980s. New information and communication technologies (ICTs) appear to favor winner-take-all markets and to accentuate firm-level volatility of profits. We show, using an efficiency wage model, that these changes lead to higher executive pay. This is an example of what we have called, in other contexts, power-biased technological change (PBTC). The changes in market structure and the power of CEOs, however, are not only technologically but also institutionally contingent. JEL Classification: D31, J41, O33

I develop a model of competition between walkable shops, and other shops whose customers drive (car-oriented shops). Walkable shops operate in monopolistic competition within a local area, or neighbourhood. A small cost advantage for car-oriented shops can turn into a larger price advantage. High prices in walkable shops effect a regressive transfer from poorer to richer consumers, since the poorer are less likely to have cars. Internalizing environmental and social costs of urban automobile use could reduce prices and increase capacity utilization in walkable shops in more densely populated local areas. Many common combinations of planning and pricing tools fail to internalize important costs, and may actually subsidize driving to shop, but a combination of planning and the pricing (through taxation) of retail parking could effectively internalize the relevant costs.

The microprocessor and related technologies have transformed corporate and industry structure; applied in a neo‐liberal environment, the technologies have had profound effects on the relative power of different groups. Skott and Guy (2007) and Guy and Skott (2008) formalized one aspect of this process of power‐biased technical change: firms' increased ability to monitor low‐paid employees and the resulting changes in inequality and employment at the low end of the income distribution. This paper addresses power biases and income inequality at the high end. Increasing firm‐level financial volatility has intensified the agency problem and increased the power of corporate executives. These effects, which have been compounded by changes in ideology and pay norms, yielded an explosion in executive pay.

We find that firms in countries which have both high earnings replacement rates and high participation in vocational education and training were less likely to reduce investments in innovation following the onset of the financial crisis; countries with only one of these features were more likely to see reduced investment in innovation; job security appears to have no effect.

Research collaborations between universities and industry (U-I) are considered to be one important channel of potential localized knowledge spillovers (LKS). These collaborations favour both intended and unintended flows of knowledge and facilitate learning processes between partners from different organizations. Despite the copious literature on LKS, still little is known about the factors driving the formation of U-I research collaborations and, in particular, about the role that geographical proximity plays in the establishment of such relationships. Using collaborative research grants between universities and business firms awarded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in this article we disentangle some of the conditions under which different kinds of proximity contribute to the formation of U-I research collaborations, focussing in particular on clustering and technological complementarity among the firms participating in such partnerships.

Using evidence from recent work on truckers and disaggregated older data prior researchers did not have, we revisit a classic topic and find some new answers. We focus on differentials in average annual earnings at the firm level among mileage-paid over-the-road tractor-trailer drivers ("road drivers") employed by US for-hire trucking companies, before and after economic deregulation. Road driver output is individualized, and pay is on the basis of a piece rate (mileage). However, road drivers work under two distinct logistical systems – less-than-truckload [LTL], and truckload [TL] – associated with two different forms of work organization. We find that – contrary to the predictions of Rose (1987) – not only are road drivers for LTL companies paid more than those for TL companies, but in LTL the union earnings premium was maintained following deregulation and union coverage fell slowly, while in TL both the union differential and union coverage fell sharply. We review relevant theoretical explanations: payment for cognitive abilities or non-pecuniary disamenities; standard efficiency wage models based on independent utilities; sharing of product market rents; equity concerns resulting from social comparisons between employee groups; and differences in work organization as a source of union rents or quasi-rents. Only equity concerns, for the LTL earnings differential, and quasi rents (but not a union threat effect, contrary to Henrickson and Wilson (2008)), for union coverage and premium in LTL, are consistent with our empirical results. Both earnings differentials are based on differences in work organization, rather than differences in the workers or the work itself.