A nova geografia econômica: um barco com a lanterna na popa? [The new economic geography: a critical assessment]

Since the beginning of the 90's the New Economic Geography (NEG) has been a theoretical reference for several researches on regional and urban economics. The main task of this paper is to present a critical assessment of the NEG approach, which has in the book The Spatial Economy, by M.Fujita, P.Krugman and A.Venables (1999), its best synthesis. The paper has three parts. The first part describes the theoretical bedrock of the NEG: the core-periphery model. In the second part some empirical and theoretical limitations of the NEG models are discussed. The last part of the paper is more exploratory and suggestive. It presents theoretical comments on the relevance of regional asymmetries and criticizes the representation of cities and regions as economic agents. Based on theses remarks, it is proposed a theoretical approach that stresses social diversities and the use of self-organizing systems as a tool able to deal with the "local histories" (path dependences) that shape and characterize the modern spatial economic structures.