Agglomeration and comparative advantage in vertically-related firms

Abstract

This paper models, in game-theoretical terms, the location of two vertically-linked monopolistic firms in a spatial economy formed by a large, high labor cost country and a relatively small, low labor cost country. It is found that the decrease in transport costs shifts firms towards the low production cost country. This process takes two different forms: in labor-intensive industries it leads to spatial fragmentation; in industries with strong input-output relations, agglomerations are conserved, although they shift toward the low labor cost country.