Integration, agglomeration and welfare

This paper studies the social desirability of agglomeration, and the efficiency arguments for policy intervention in a simple, analytically tractable new economic geography model. The location pattern emerging as market equilibrium is ‘bubble-shaped’, i.e. it features dispersion both at high and low trade costs and stable equilibria with partial and full agglomeration for intermediate levels of trade costs. We show that the market equilibrium is characterized by over-agglomeration for high trade costs and under-agglomeration for low trade costs, and we work out analytically that a net pecuniary externality is the underlying cause of this market failure. One particularly noteworthy result is that the net pecuniary externality is positive at high levels of trade freeness. However, there is no market under-agglomeration unless this positive net pecuniary externality interacts with an additional congestion force originating in the (per se efficient) competitive housing market.     

From risks to second-order dangers in financial markets: Unintended consequences of risk management systems

This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 25 years after its publication. Few books have made such productive contributions to expanding the horizons of political economy, particularly the spatiality of political economy, as has Uneven Development. This introductory article explores some of these aspects of the book's significance for the readership of New Political Economy; it remarks on the lasting if not growing significance of Smith's intellectual and political contributions two and a half decades after one of his, and the discipline of geography's, crowning achievements. At the same time it foreshadows ways in which the text can continue to push our understanding of the interconnections among nature, capital and the production of space.     

Market access,supplier access,and Africa's manufactured exports: A firm level analysis

Abstract

In a large cross-country sample of manufacturing establishments drawn from 188 cities, average exports per establishments are smaller for African firms than for businesses in other regions. Based on the estimation of firm level exporting equations, we show that this is mainly because, on average, African firms face more adverse economic geography and operate in poorer institutional settings. One part of the effect of geography operates through Africa's lower ‘foreign market access’: African firms are located further away from wealthier or denser potential export markets. A second occurs through the region's lower ‘supplier access’: African firms face steeper input prices, partly because of their physical distance from cheaper foreign suppliers, and partly because domestic substitutes for importable inputs are more expensive. Africa's poorer institutions reduce its manufactured exports directly, as well as indirectly, by lowering foreign market access and supplier access. Both geography and institutions influence average firm level exports significantly more through their effect on the number of exporters than through their impact on how much each exporter sells onto foreign markets.     

冷战后俄罗斯地缘战略的研究

冷战后,俄罗斯面临内忧外患的国内外形势,采取了切实可行的地缘战略,为其重振大国地位起到了重要作用。在地缘战略概念和提法被国际社会普遍认同情况下,有必要从战略高度综合思考地缘政治、地缘经济、地缘军事和地缘文化等内容。对维护国家主权与领土完整统一,确保国家安全与发展,谋求和平稳定的周边环境,以及推动建立国际政治经济新秩序等具有重要意义。     

The core and periphery of the world economy

This paper reviews three models of foreign trade, including the Heckscher-Ohlin model, the new trade theory based on increasing returns to scale, and the model of economic geography and trade with agglomeration effects. It demonstrates that gravity models perform relatively well for differentiated and non-differentiated products. This result supports Hummels' and Levinsohn's () critique of the new theory foundation of the gravity equation. Furthermore, the bilateral trade relations of peripheral countries are often identified as outliers. This pattern of outliers is consistent with the model of geography and trade.