The most salient feature of the spatial economy is the presence of a large variety of economic agglomerations. Our purpose is to review some of the main explanations of this universal phenomenon, as they are proposed in urban economics and modern economic geography. Because of space constraints, we restrict ourselves to the most recent contributions, referring the reader to our forthcoming book...

This analysis of the Brazilian geography congresses sponsored by the Geography Society of Rio de Janeiro between 1909 and 1944 identifies commonalities as well as differences over the years. Given how these scientific events focused on both the state of the art within the field as well as on its overall development, such an analysis serves as a good thermometer for measuring the social, economi...

Traditional neoclassical models of comparative advantage suggest that, all else equal, a country with idiosyncratically strong demand for a good will be an importer of that good. However, there is a contrary tradition that emphasizes the advantages of a large home market as a foundation for exports of a good. One recent formalization of this home market approach falls within what is termed the ...

It is clear that technology is a key driver of economic growth. Much less clear is where new technologies are produced and how the geography of U.S. invention has changed over the last two hundred years. Patent data report the geography, history, and technological characteristics of invention. However, those data have only recently become available in digital form and at the present time there ...

This paper develops a model of economic growth and activity locating endogenously on a 3dimensional featureless global geography. The same economic forces influence simultaneously growth, convergence, and spatial agglomeration and clustering. Economic activity is not concentrated on discrete isolated points but instead a dynamically-fluctuating, smooth spatial distribution. Spatial inequality i...

The objective of great investments in telecommunication networks is to approach economies and put an end to the asymmetries. The most isolated regions could be the beneficiaries of this new technological investments wave disseminating trough the territories. The new economic scenarios created by globalisation make high capacity backbones and coherent information society polity, two instruments ...

The 1918-19 influenza epidemic killed at least 40 million people worldwide and 675,000 people in the United States, far exceeding the combat deaths tolls experienced in the U.S. in the two World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam combined. Besides its extraordinary virulence, the 1918-19 epidemic was also unique in that a disproportionate number of its victims were men and women age 15 to 44, giving the ...

Despite robust economic growth in the post-War era, there remain deep pockets of persistent poverty in the United States. We examine the origins of permanent income differences across counties using contemporaneous and historical Census data. Using a panel of U.S. counties from 1960 to 2000 and a long-difference dynamic panel-data estimator, we first test whether aggregate production technologi...

A Flemish official interviewed by Van Dam (1997) as part of a large survey on the relations between linguistic groups in Belgium explained the unfavorable situation of Wallonia in comparison with Flanders in the following terms: “Wallonia suffers from a mentality which does not favor economic development. The prevailing culture is socialism. The socialist party sets the tone (...) Walloons tend...

This paper presents an integrated view of economic growth, development traps, and economic geography. We explain why there is income convergence among some countries (neoclassical regime) and income divergence among others (poverty trap regime). Income convergence (divergence) and manufacturing industry di¤usion (agglomeration) are re-enforcing each other in a cumulative process. Moreover, trad...