In New Trade Theory models, the larger region hosts an overproportionate share of producers. This Home Market Effect (HME) exacerbates regional income discrepancies caused by trade frictions or technology differences. With homogeneous firms, it requires inter-industry reallocations to emerge. We...

Globalization and European integration are substantially changing the interregional division of labor in Europe and the industrial specialization of European regions, thereby potentially affecting the extent of disparities between countries and regions. This paper reviews several theoretical...

Second nature geography variables are very relevant in the explanation of income disparities across regions within countries and across countries. This paper uses the framework of the New Economic Geography to derive the structural equation which relates nominal wages with a distance weighted...

The effects of the liberalization of international trade are analyzed in a New Economic Geography model of a country with an asymmetric distribution of housing between regions. Labour is mobile between regions but not between countries. Trade liberalization tends to reduce inequalities in the...

We study the effect of spatial inequality on economic activity. Given that the relationship is highly simultaneous in nature, we use exogenous variation in geographic features to construct an instrument for spatial inequality, which is independent from any man-made factors. Inequality measures...

Using French data, we provide: a) causal evidence that a drop in local public goods provision decreases private sector activity, and b) evidence consistent with monopsony power of the public sector in local labor markets. We introduce a public sector with these two key characteristics in an...