2 2 Abstract Regional economies are synergy-laden systems of physical and relational assets, and intensifying globalization is making this situation more and not less the case. As such, regions are an essential dimension of the development process, not just in the more advanced countries but also in less-developed parts of the world. Development theorists have hitherto largely tended to overloo...

This paper offers an organizational perspective on the firm in new economic geographies. It starts with the premise of the firm as a production function in neoclassical economics and a cost minimisation device in transaction cost economics. By pointing out the inadequacy in these mainstream economic perspectives on the firm, I draw upon recent behavioral and managerial theories to develop a rel...

There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot easily be controlled for. The innovation of Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2001) was to address this ...

Infrastructure planning for networked infrastructure such as grid electrification (or piped supply of water) has historically been a process of outward network expansion, either by utilities in response to immediate economic opportunity, or in response to a government mandate or subsidy intended to catalyze economic growth. While significant progress has been made in access to grid electricity ...

There has been a vast recent literature which has emphasized the role of human capital and knowledge on the economic growth process. This paper presents a model where the knowledge occurs through solving "problems." These problems which are partially idiosyncratic to the country. We think of a problem as a new technique or good. Each nation must master the problems associated with an activity i...

We review historical patterns of "economic geography" for the United States from the colonial period to the present day. The analysis is framed in terms of two geographic scales: regions and cities. The compelling reason for studying geographic areas of different scales is that models that explain the location of economic activities at one scale many not apply to other scales. We consider the p...

This paper describes the situation from the beginning of the industrial revolution when levels of urbanisation were dependent on geography and the historical situation and when the general level of urbanisation was low, through the nineteenth century in which agricultural productivity and industrialisation determined the levels of urbanisation. This period represents a dramatic increase in the ...