The division of labor between and within countries is driven by two fundamental forces, comparative advantage and increasing returns. We set up a simple Ricardian model with a Marshallian input sharing mechanism to study their interplay. The key insight that emerges is that the interaction...

This chapter provides a comprehensive view on the field of New Economic Geography (NEG). It starts by describing the background in adjacent fields of economics which made the surge of NEG possible. It lays out the necessary ingredients and fundamental forces at work that define any NEG framework...

Economic activities are highly clustered. Why is geographic concentration becoming a predominant feature of modern economies? On the basis of the empirical models developed by the 'new' theories of international trade, our answer is that increasing returns are the driving force of economic...

Peaks and troughs in the spatial distributions of population, employment and wealth are a universal phenomenon in search of a general theory. Such spatial imbalances have two possible explanations. In the first one, uneven economic development can be seen as the result of the uneven distribution...

This handbook chapter studies the theoretical micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies. We distinguish three types of micro-foundations, based on sharing, matching, and learning mechanisms. For each of these three categories, we develop one or more core models in detail and discuss the...

This paper delves into geographical agglomeration patterns of economic activities focusing on the connection between these agglomeration tendencies and sectoral patterns of innovative activities. Within a broad evolutionary perspective, we refine upon incumbent statistical models, trying to...