Gustavsson [1999] finds that policies that promote international trade increase the size of a country’s largest city relative to the country’s total population, which is defined here as an increase in urban gigantism. In contrast, Ades and Glaeser [1995] report urban gigantism is reduced by...

Extending Krugman’s (1991) economic geography model, this paper examines the stability of an industrial structure resulting from the production shifting-in effect of the formation of regional trade agreements. This paper claims that nonhigher external trade costs against non-member countries...

This paper - a piece of the research output of the EU-funded project TERA - investigates the dynamics of development in the area of Basso Ferrarese, in Italy. The area is a relatively underdeveloped zone located in the otherwise wealthy Emilia Romagna. The first part of the paper identifies some...

Where economic activity will locate in the future is one of the most important questions in economics. Even though advances in technology have reduced the cost of transport, communication and information gathering and processing, hence curtailing the ‘distance penalty’, local proximity...

We analyze industrial specialization and geographic concentration patterns within the NAFTA area during 1988-2000 and examine the determinant of spatial concentration. NAFTA countries have become increasingly dissimilar over time. A changing spatial structure of total NAFTA manufacturing is also...

This paper presents a two-country two-industry monetary model, with intermediate inputs and transport costs, which builds a bridge between the New Open Economy Macroeconomics and the New Economic Geography literatures. Endogenously asymmetric shocks arise in this model when the exchange rate...

In this paper, I reexamine the empirical relationship between trade openness and urban concentration. Using a panel data set of more than 110 countries for the period from 1970 through 2000, I find that previous results of a negative association between trade openness and the size of a country's...

This paper provides a new model of firm’s location choices. It integrates a Ricardian model of comparative advantage with the location effects deriving from trade costs, increasing returns to scale, product dif ferentiation, and monopolistic competition. In a two-region,...

Traditional push-and-pull factors offered partial explanations to the size of large urban areas in the third world. Moreover, the growing literature in eco - nomic geography identifies an additional factor exacerbating the phenomenon, namely trade costs. The present study tests econometrically...

The focus of this paper is the political economy of integration in the framework of the Customs Union and Single Economic Space. Clearly, Russia is a dominant power in this project, and her political interests may outweigh economic ones. However, neither Belarus nor Kazakhstan is forcefully...