Innovation and the Growth of Cities (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Perspective of Economic Geography
The paper opens with a statement on the social embeddedness of knowledge. The disciplinary situation and practices of economic geographers are reviewed in the light of this statement. The rise of a new geographical economics is noted, and its main thrust is summarized in terms of a description of the core model as formulated by Krugman. The geographers’ reception of the new geographical economics is described, and some key aspects of this reception are assessed. I then subject the core model itself to critical evaluation. Its claims about pecuniary externalities in the context of chamberlinian competition provide a number of useful insights. However, I argue that the model is deficient overall in the manner in which it tackles the central problem of agglomeration. The discussion then moves on to consideration of the recent interest shown by many economic geographers in issues of culture. After a brief exposition of what this means for economic geography, I offer the verdict that this shift of emphasis has much to recommend it, but that in some of its more extreme versions it is strongly susceptible to the temptations of philosophical idealism and political voluntarism. In the final part of the paper, I attempt to pinpoint some of the major tasks ahead for economic geography in the phase of post-“late capitalism.” I suggest, in particular, that a new cognitive map of capitalist society as a whole is urgently needed, and I offer some brief remarks about how its basic specifications might be identified.
Toward a Unified Theory of Economic Geography and Urban Economics
Journal of Regional Science, 2010
In this paper, I pursue two objectives. First, I propose a primer in economic geography relying on a simple model that can be solved analytically by undergraduate students. Second, I briefly discuss two topics that, in my opinion, should rank high on the research agenda. * I thank Kristian Behrens, Gilles Duranton, Carl Gaigné, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Joe Tharakan for their comments and suggestions. All of them have been my students and the time I shared with them on this occasion has been one of the most enjoyable of my academic life.
Essays in New Economic Geography
The recent Nobel Prize assigned to Paul Krugman "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity" witnesses the important role that the scienti c community gives to the insights of the so-called New Economic Geography (NEG) literature. This field of economic analysis has always been particularly appealing to policy makers, given the direct link between its results and regional policy rules. For the same reason it is useful to deepen the analysis of its most important outputs by testing the theoretical robustness of some of its more relevant statements. This thesis tries to o¤er a contribution in this direction by focusing on a particular sub-field of NEG literature, the so-called New Economic Geography and Growth (NEGG) literature, having in Baldwin and Martin (2004) and Baldwin et. al (2004) the most important theoretical syntheses. These two surveys collect and present in an uni ed framework the works by Baldwin, Martin and Ottaviano (2001), where ca...
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2009
Paul Krugman has clarified the microeconomic underpinnings of both spatial economic agglomerations and regional imbalances at national and international levels. He has achieved this with a series of remarkably original papers and books that succeed in combining imperfect competition, increasing returns, and transportation costs in new and powerful ways. Yet, not everything was brand new in New Economic Geography. To be precise, several disparate pieces of high-quality work were available in urban economics and location theory. Our purpose in this paper is to shed new light on economic geography through the lenses of these two fields of economics and regional science.
Yet Another Turn? The Evolutionary Project in Economic Geography
Economic Geography, 2009
Key words: evolutionary economic geography institutional economic geography political economic geography Generalized Darwinism Nelson and Winter abstract What does the economic in economic geography stand for? For much of the 1990s up to the more recent past, answers to this pertinent question frequently referred to the embeddedness-network paradigm of the new economic sociology. At the same time, economic geography more and more drew inspiration, metaphors, and practices from an increasingly diverse range of schools. In terms of the disciplinary orientation, economic geography, on the one hand, remains firmly engaged with sociology, although interest seems to expand from the Granovetterian paradigm to the poststructuralism of Latour and Callon. On the other hand, economic geography's interest in heterodox economic geography is gaining new momentum. Above all, evolutionary approaches have attracted considerable attention that most recently culminated in a range of programmatic statements to develop a distinct evolutionary economic geography. It is these attempts to develop a collective agenda that
New Economic Geography: history and debate
This paper aims to synthesize the main ontological discussion around the field of New Economic Geography. It lays down the fundamental motivations that led to the surge of New Economic Geography and provides the background in adjacent fields of economic theory which made this possible. I then provide an overall assessment of the state of the art in NEG and track the intellectual evolution of the field since the nineties up to the present, focusing on the intrinsic criticism that it has been subject to throughout its history. This criticism has its roots in the different ontological conceptions of geography and history, as well on the methodological differences, between economists and geographers. Finally, I analyze the evolution of the debate and communication between geographical economists and economic geographers.