This article presents a summary of our conversation on the past, present and future of the new economic geography, which took place with the help of an interlocutor in San Juan, Puerto Rico in November 2002. Following the introduction, we explain what the new economic geography is, and we describe some basic models. The discussion of its various critical aspects is presented subsequently, and t...

Recent theoretical and empirical advances in economic geography have contributed to the emergence of what might be termed a “relational turn” that focuses primarily on the ways in which socio-spatial relations of actors are intertwined with processes of economic changes at various geographical scales – global, local, or glocal. This mapping of actororiented “relational geometries” fundamentally...

There are two principal theories of why countries or regions trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is virtually no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing returns model of economic geography featuring ‘home market effects’ with that o...

Mainstream economic literature has often neglected spatial issues. Marshall having initiated the study of agglomeration economies, these were then only further pursued in specialized lines of research in economics and economic geography. General interest in them was revived by the "new economic geography" when it applied new economic tools and concepts to their study. However, in order to under...

The IMP research tradition has always been open to the cross-fertilisation of ideas with other social science disciplines that study similar phenomena. Recent years have seen a growing interest among IMP researchers in phenomena such as regional strategic networks, spatial clusters and innovation and new business development in networks. IMP papers published on these topics are increasingly cit...

• This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Economic Geography following peer review. The de nitive publisher-authenticated version [HARRISON, J., 2007. From competitive regions to competitive cityregions: a new orthodoxy, but some old mistakes. Journal of Economic Geography, 7 (3), pp. 311-332 ] is available online at: http://joeg.oxfo...