Much of the empirical literature on the natural rate of interest has focused on estimating its path. This paper addresses the question of how exogenous movements in the natural rate of interest affect aggregate activity and inflation in the short and long runs. To this end it proposes a...

We review the theoretical links between growth and agglomeration. Growth, in the form of innovation, can be at the origin of catastrophic spatial agglomeration in a cumulative process la Myrdal. One of the surprising features of the Krugman [Journal of Political Economy 99 (1991) 483499] model,...