We address the fundamental question arising in economic geography: why do economic activities agglomerate in a small number of places? The main reasons for the formation of economic clusters involving firms and/or households are analysed: (i) externalities under perfect competition; (ii)...

The present paper focuses on sorting as a mechanism behind the well-established fact that there is a central region productivity premium. Using a model of heterogeneous firms that can move between regions, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) show how more productive firms sort themselves to the large core...

This paper compares two policies: trade cost reduction and firm relocation cost reduction using a three-country version of a heterogeneous-firms economic geography model, where the three countries have different market (population) size. We show how the effects of the two policies differ, in...

This paper compares two policies: trade cost reduction and firm relocation cost reduction using a three-country version of a heterogeneous-firms geography and trade model, where the three countries have different market (population) sizes. We show how the effects of the two policies differ, in...

The present paper focuses on spatial sorting as a mechanism behind the well-established fact that there is a central region productivity premium. Using a model of heterogeneous firms that can move between regions, Baldwin and Okubo (2006) show how more productive firms sort themselves to the...

Canonical analysis of the classical general equilibrium model demonstrates the existence of an open and dense subset of standard economies that possess fully-revealing rational expectations equilibria. This paper shows that the analogous result is not true in urban economies under appropriate...

This paper explores the formation of cities through labour specialization, gains to trade, a fixed cost for the transportation network, imperfect competition between firms, and the commuting costs of consumers. The model uses a very general setting, allowing a multidimensional location space and...

The aim of this paper is to explore the structure of cities as a function of labor differentiation, gains to trade, a fixed cost for constructing the transportation network, a variable cost of commodity transport, and the commuting costs of consumers. Firms use different types of labor to...